Lent 2018

So I finally figured out what I need to give up for Lent. I know it probably won’t come as a huge surprise here since my last half dozen posts have only dealt with three things (my bucket list, reading, and Lent) but I’ve decided to give up reading. Well, I’ve decided to give up starting new books. I frequently have a half a dozen books on the go and I read a LOT. I’ve decided that for what is left of Lent, I can only read the books I have scheduled for this month (two book club selections and my “March” selection) and finish the two books I have on the go – “February” by Lisa Moore and “Ben-Hur” which I’ve been reading since sometime last year. That’s still a good number of books but it’s way less than normal. I will be/have been replacing the time I would normally spend reading books with reading my bible and other spiritually edifying materials. I’m also going to try to stay off Goodreads and other websites where I obsess over the number of books I read. Wish me luck! It’s already weird to not be looking for the next book I can read but I think it will be good.

2018 Reading Goals

As stated in my previous post my goal for 2018 is to read 108 books total. That’s nine books per month which seems doable. Inspired by my friend Liz (LiteraryLizard) , I am putting some parameters on the books I read. First of all, no matter how many books I read, 25% of them need to be by Canadian authors. I was close to that last year with 23% written by Canadian authors. In addition, at least 25% need to be from my own bookshelf. I have accumulated a rather astounding number of books over the last few years, mostly from secondhand book sales and library sales. I estimate I have around 60 books on my shelves that I have yet to read so that gives me a good selection to choose from.

I am also doing another 52 Week Reading Challenge. I found this one on Pinterest and like last year, I expect it will help me stretch my genres.

I am part of two book clubs so that will account for another 24 books that are chosen for me.

In addition, I thought it would be fun to, every month, read a book that has that month’s name in the title. It doesn’t have to necessarily be in relation to that month, but it could be. For example, for January I am reading “Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission" by Bret Baier. For February, I’ve had “February” by Lisa Moore, on my “to-read” list for quite a while. For March, I’m looking forward to reading Geraldine Brooks’ “March” about the patriarch of the March clan featured in Little Women. I’m open to suggestions for the other months. October will likely be something regarding the October Crisis but I don’t have anything for the other months yet.

Lastly, an ongoing goal is to read one book that substantially takes place in the ten provinces and three territories of Canada and each of the fifty American states. I started tracking those books in 2017 and I will continue to do so in 2018.

So, to recap:

108 Books in 2018

25% Canadian

25% from my bookshelf

52 Week Reading Challenge

24 Book Club selections

12 months

50 States (ongoing)

13 Provinces & Territories (ongoing)

Unlike Liz, my challenges will overlap. For example, if I read a book from my bookshelf by a Canadian author that fits into the 52 Week Reading Challenge AND satisfies the location requirement, then I can count it on all four lists as well as towards my annual goal. However, each book can only count for each list once. It will be less complicated than it sounds and I’m the one who has to track it anyway. I’ll try and report back on my reading but you can always follow my progress on Goodreads!

2017 Reading Challenge: A Review

I have always been what one might call a “voracious” reader. I was one of three students in grade six who won a contest for reading the most books. Every summer the local library hosted a summer reading challenge and I was always diligent about recording the books I read.

Once I started university, my reading for pleasure took a back seat. I even went through a period as a second year history student where I wouldn’t read fiction. I just wasn’t interested in people’s made up worlds where people may or may not survive or fall in love or whatever, all at the author’s whim. During the summers of 2013 and 2014 I was in France and my reading options were limited…mostly because I hadn’t discovered the versatility of borrowing e-books through the library.

In 2015 I went on a cruise and in one week I read five books. Once I finished my masters degree in 2016 I started really reading for pleasure again. At some point I started a Goodreads account and in the Fall of 2016 I started tracking my reading more closely. In January 2017 a friend of mine shared a 52 week reading challenge. I knew I already was reading a fairly wide variety of books but I figured this would be a good way to challenge myself to read genres I generally avoided (aka fantasy). I tracked my reading both on Goodreads and in a bullet journal. By the end of 2017 I had completed the challenge. My total for the year was a whopping 117 books read. <-super -="" by="" check="" cool="" goodreads="" graphics="" it="" o:p="" out="" provided="">

I was reading right up to the afternoon of New Year’s Eve which was a bit stressful so I’ve reduced my 2018 target down to 108. That’s still over two a week, basically nine a month. Very doable, assuming I maintain the pace of last year. I also have a new 52 week challenge. I’ll cover that in a separate post. Right now I want to review what I read last year.

Of the 117 books I read 38 via audio and one as it was released via podcast. Two of those I started the paper version and ended with the audio. The rest were either hard copy or e-book. So that’s 32% done via audio. I have a forty minute commute each way to work so that really helped pass the time.

Here's just a few of the books I read. You can see the complete list on my Goodreads account. 

Some thoughts on the books I read:

My Top Five of 2017

• All the Light We Cannot See
• The Light Between the Oceans
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
• The Eye of the Needle – Ken Follett
• Longbourn – Jo Baker

Worst book: “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond (so boring)

Read in one day: “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green

Books that should only be listened to on audio: 

• Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
• Yes, Chef by Marcus Samuelsson

Books I read only because of their title

• Badass Librarians of Timbuktu: and their race to save the world’s most precious manuscripts by Joshua Hammer 
• What I was Doing While You Were Breeding: A Memoir by Kristin Newman

Book everyone should read: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson 

Summer Reading: Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

I know I'm in France to learn French but sometimes you just need a break. I bought a few books in Paris but I finished them by the time I got to Cannes. Luckily there is an English language book store here. Apparently one of only six in France? Anyway, I went in one day and found this book. I have two complaints about it. Considering it has 850 pages, it's WAY too easy to read and, it's "Book One of The Century trilogy" but book two is still only available in hardcover and book three isn't even written yet!!!

Other than that, to say I enjoyed it is an understatement. I forced myself to leave it downstairs so I would only read when I was taking a break or waiting on someone or something but even then I plowed through it. If I had taken it up to my room I would have finished it in a few days.

It deals with the First World War, starting in 1911 and ending in 1924. It follows the stories of six families and associated characters who get caught up in the events of the war. I'm confident that anyone would enjoy it but for me it was particularly appealing for a few reasons. First, I recently visited a lot of the places mentioned in the book. Paris, Berlin and various battlefields. Second, Follett is great at weaving historical events into his fictional works and the History nerd in me got excited every time he mentioned one. Particularly events having to do with Mexico and the US like the Zimmerman Telegram and the Occupation of Veracruz. I studied both in detail in Georgia and even wrote a book review on a book that dealt with the Occupation. Aside from that the book is just really well written and I found myself thinking about different characters and wondering what was going to happen next. Book two deals with their children and I can't wait to read it.

The Shallows

A few weeks ago I met up with my friend Steph for drinks at a new cafe in town that I recently discovered. It was a gorgeous day so we sat out on the patio and then went for a walk through Uptown Waterloo and browsed in the shops. We ended up in a bookstore where I picked up a few books from the bargain bin. As I was paying I made a comment about hoping I could concentrate long enough to actually read them. I'm finding that my ability to lose myself in a book for hours on end like I could when I was a kid is gone. I was questioning if it has just been the books I've been reading (are they not that interesting?) or conditioning from working as a receptionist for so many years where you're constantly interrupted. The owner of the book store asked me to wait and he went and pulled a book from the shelf entitled "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains". I almost never buy full priced books but this one looked so interesting that I just did it. And luckily it was. The book itself is pretty full of stats and results of studies and surveys but the bottom line is that the inability to concentrate that I am feeling isn't unique to me and the culprit is actually the internet!

One passage that really stood out was near the end.

"The influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal lobes to concentrate our attention on any one thing. The process of memory consolidation can't even get started. And, thanks once again to the plasticity of our neuronal pathways, the more we use the Web, the more we train our brain to be distracted - to process information very quickly and very efficiently but without sustained attention. That helps explain why many of us find it hard to concentrate even when we're away from our computers. Our brains become adept at forgetting, inept at remembering. Our growing dependence on the Web's information stores may in fact be the product of a self-perpetuating self-amplifying loop. As our use of the Web makes it harder for us to lock information into our biological memory, w're forced to rely more and more on the Net's capacious and easily searchable artificial memory, even if it makes us shallower thinkers.

The book talks about the lull of electronic stimulation and how our brains have been reshaped and reformed to need it. On one hand it's a bit depressing but on the other, it's nice to know that I'm not the only one feeling like this and it CAN be reversed. It just takes dedicated time to rework those neural pathways. Interesting stuff!

Random Memory #7: Summer Reading Programs

I took these pictures a few years back anticipating a blog post like this.

I was in the library yesterday in the kids section (getting more Disney DVD's to watch in French, currently I'm watching the Little Mermaid) and I overheard the librarian explaining the summer reading program to a young girl. I used to LOVE the summer reading programs they offered in my hometown. I participated every year but I think 1994 was the year I read the most. I remember going back to the library multiple times to get more cards and stickers because I kept using mine up. I read a lot of Babysitters Club that year but a lot of other things as well. The idea was that you set a goal for yourself of minutes of reading a day. I forget exactly what mine was. Probably 15 minutes, 30 and 45 or an hour for gold. I gave myself a lot of golds. I know I read a lot.

The hardest part for me of being in university is not being able to chose what I read. I mean I find the required reading really interesting (thank goodness) but there is SO much that it's hard to fit anything else in without feeling guilty. This last year I w

as reading ALL the time, at home, on the bus, on my fifteen minute breaks at work, but it was all required reading. I don't know if that will change next year but for now, I'm enjoying my summer reading.

I never really understood "summer reading" until now. Reading is something I do all the time and until I was in university I didn't understand how some people could not have the time for reading for pleasure.

I took this picture of the books laying around my room waiting for exams to be over in April. The twilight ones are in there (and I've since added Breaking Dawn as well) because I'm hoping to scrapbook my trip to Forks, WA this summer and while I may not read them cover to cover, I will reference them while scrapbooking. The top two, Little House on the Prairie and Wind in the Willows along with Marley & Me, Like Dandelion Dust and Little Women (not yet acquired) are the selections for the book club back home that I am still an honorary (albeit bad) member of. Since I took this picture I've finished the LM Montgomery and Louis Riel & Gabriel Dumont biographies, all three Starbucks books and World Without End. I've also read two others that weren't in that pile and added at least five more. It's great to have time to read what I chose again!

Joseph Boyden

So I haven't blogged in a month now. I obviously have tons to write about but unfortunately not a lot of time to do it in. I had a cool experience tonight though so I want to quickly share it.

My North American Studies prof references TONS of movies and lots of books during lectures. A few weeks ago I asked her for some recommendations of Canadian Historical Fiction (you know, incase I ever decide that sleep isn't important and I actually find time to read anything other than my text books :P) She mentioned an author named Joseph Boyden and noted that he was actually coming to Waterloo (my new town) just after his next book was released. I didn't know until a few days ago if I could go for sure but yesterday I bought the book (the $10 ticket is free if you do) and tonight I went to the event. My prof was there as well, with her mother who happens to be visiting from BC! She introduced me which was pretty cool :)

The book is about the famous Metis leader Louis Riel and his not as famous counterpart, Gabriel Dumont. I haven't read the whole thing yet (note the above about textbooks) but it's a fairly easy, gripping read so far. Hearing Joseph talk about the book, about his process in approaching what to include (because it's relatively short considering the vast subject that is Louis Riel) and his struggles of getting it all down, was fascinating. He also read most of the first chapter and the Epilogue (you can read the epilouge with a non-fiction book. Everyone already knows that Riel died :P) Boyden is a Canadian (Metis) living part time in Louisiana so he has an interesting mixed accent. Both his talk and the Q&A after added an extra dimension to the book and I can't wait to finish reading it.

I was able to meet him afterwards and he signed my copy. I was telling him that I had driven from BC to ON and had visited some of the areas featured in the book so his epilogue (which is about him being in Saskatchewan) really resonated with me. As I type this I remember reading on his website that he's acutally BEEN to Abbotsford so he would know where that is, that's why he included when he autographed my book :)

As far as I can remember this is my first author/book event (I've done tons of concerts obvbiously but this is different) and I hope to do more!

My Reading List

I am feeling some pressure to get through the books on my current reading list. They're all so interesting that it's difficult to chose which to work on though!
1. "Jane Eyre" by Emily Bronte - at the top of the list because I need to have it read for our next book club meeting on Tuesday. It's been a struggle because it's SUCH a long book but the end is in sight.
2. "Twilight & History" edited by Nancy R. Reagin - This one is a series of essays on the characters in Twilight and how their personal histories were shaped based on when they were turned. It's a fascinating read but I borrowed it from on of the book club members. I'd love to give it back to her on Tuesday but I kind of doubt that's going to happen.
3. "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett - This is on my list of 100 books and was actually the one I read most while on vacation. I borrowed it from Meredith so I have to have it read before I leave in mid-August. That's lots of time but I'm halfway done and I just want to keep reading!
4. "I Think She's Trying to Tell Me Something" by Dan Graziano - I haven't even started this one but it's got a great title and it's borrowed as well so I'd like to get through it.
5. "Twilight Saga: Eclipse" by Stephanie Meyer - Not a must read but it's our book club selection for July. We moved our meeting date up to July 6th so we can all see the movie sooner rather than later. I've already read this book twice but it was my favourite of the four so I'd love to read it again before the movie comes out.

Those are the ones on my "active" list. There are tons of other books lying around here that I either need to read, pack or get rid of before I move, not to mention the library books that I take out and return without even cracking :( Anyways, having too many books to read is a good problem to have :) I'd take it over many others any day!

Top 100 Books Challenge

Tosin posted this list and I was suprised to see how many I've actually read in the past little while, or am planning on reading.

1 To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee Grade 10 requirement, 1997
2 The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett
3 Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen S2S selection, 2010
4 Twilight (2005) by Stephenie Meyer personal selection, 2009
5 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) by Ronald Dahl
6 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
7 1984 (1949) by George Orwell
8 Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë read before but I can't remember when. Also S2S selection in June
9 The Richest Man in Babylon (1955) George S. Clason
10 The Catcher in the Rye (1945) by J.D. Salinger Half read. Must finish.
11 Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) by Anne Frank Personal selection, a long time ago
12 Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Alcott
13 Gone With The Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
14 The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C.S. Lewis
15 The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry
16 The Kite Runner (2003) by Khaled Hosseini
17 A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens
18 The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald Personal selection, read April 2010
19 The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) by Alexandre Dumas
20 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams
21 Ender's Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card
22 Anne of Green Gables (1905) by L.M. Montgomery, Margaret Atwood (Introduction)
23 Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
24 The Time Traveler's Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger
25 Les Misérables (1862) by Victor Hugo
26 The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
27 Mein Kampf (1925) Adolf Hitler
28 One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa (Translator)
29 The Alchemist (1988) by Paulo Coelho
30 The Princess Bride (1973) by William Goldman
31 East of Eden (1952) by John Steinbeck
32 The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
33 Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell
34 Memoirs of a Geisha (1997) by Arthur Golden Personal Selection, 2007
35 A Million Little Pieces (2003) James Frey
36 Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
37 Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding Grade 9(?) Requirement, 1996
38 Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau
39 A Wrinkle in Time (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle Personal selection, forever ago
40 Anna Karenina (1873) by Leo Tolstoy
41 Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller
42 Life of Pi (2001) by Yann Martel Half read. I don't care if I ever finish it.
43 Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
44 A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens
45 Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams
46 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (1865) by Lewis Carroll
47 A Thousand Splendid Suns (2006) by Khaled Hosseini
48 The Poisonwood Bible (1998) by Barbara Kingsolver
49 Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë Personal Selction, 2009
50 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997) by J.K. Rowling Personal Selection, 200? & 2007
51 Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert
52 The Odyssey (600) by Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator)
53 Water for Elephants (2006) by Sara Gruen
54 Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley
55 The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy
56 The Fountainhead (1943) by Ayn Rand
57 The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890 by Oscar Wilde
58 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain
59 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943) by Betty Smith Personal Selection, a few years ago
60 The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (1983) by Reduced Shakespeare Company
61 Angela's Ashes (1996) by Frank McCourt
62 The Book Thief (2005) by Markus Zusak
63 The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown Personal Selection, 2005ish
64 The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again (1937) by J.R.R. Tolkien
65 Night (1958) by Elie Wiesel
66 The Pillars of the Earth (1989) by Ken Follett Personal Selection, currently reading
67 The Giving Tree (1964) by Shel Silverstein
68 Outlander (1991) by Diana Gabaldon
69 The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear (Translator)
70 Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand Has been on my "to read list" for two years.
71 A Prayer for Owen Meany (1988) by John Irving
72 Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
73 Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker
74 The Lovely Bones (202) by Alice Sebold
75 Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen Personal Selection, a few years ago
76 The Iliad (600) by Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator)
77 Moby Dick (1850) by Herman Melville Just downloaded from iTunes!
78 War and Peace (1865) by Leo Tolstoy, Henry Gifford (editor)
79 Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck
80 The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway
80 Middlesex (2002) by Jeffrey Eugenides
82 Lonesome Dove (1920) by Larry McMurtry
83 The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath
84 The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1983) by Milan Kundera
85 Siddhartha (1922) by Hermann Hesse
86 The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood
87 Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
88 Emma (1815) by Jane Austen, Fiona J. Stafford (Editor) Personal Selection, a few years ago
89 On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
90 The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005) by Jeannette Walls
91 All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich Maria Remarque
92 The Master and Margarita (1966) by Mikhail Bulgakov
93 The Red Tent (1997) by Anita Diamant
94 Pygmalion (1914) by George Bernard Shaw
95 A Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess
96 The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) by Stephen Chbosky
97 Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1888) by Thomas Hardy
98 The Name of the Rose (1980) by Umberto Eco
99 Eat, Pray, Love (2006) by Elizabeth Gilbert
100 Romeo and Juliet (1595) by William Shakespeare Grade 10 Requirement, 1997


So of the 100 books on this list, I've read 17. Four are on my "to read list"
- Pillars of the Earth
- Moby Dick
- Catcher in the Rye
- Atlas Shrugged

That leaves 79 to go! There are a few that I've seen the movie, or a few movies for so I feel like I am really familiar with the story (Anne of Green Gables, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory). Others that I think I might have read but I can't remember 100% (Secret Garden, Les Miserables). And ones I have no intention of reading (The Lovely Bones, Clockwork Orange)

It's definitely an interesting list and a good one to work through since these books aren't exactly light and take awhile to get through.

Quattrocento

I haven't blogged about my New York because it's just too overwhelming. I did upload scads of pictures to Facebook and I figure anyone who really cares can see them there. This blog entry has pictures from the trip but it's not about the trip, well, not really.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a small room. It is the "studiolo from the ducal palace in Gubbio, in Umbria, Italy". While we were in there our "guide" Jenny, referred to a book she was reading that started in that very room. I finally remembered to get the name of the book from her and recently finished it. It's called "Quattrocento" and it's written by James McKean. I admit as I started it I could hear the voice of Mrs. Brownlee, my elementary school librarian saying "if you pick up a book, open it to a page and there are more than five words that you don't recognize, put it back on the shelf". There was definitely a lot of terminology I didn't recognize since it deals with art restoration but once I got past those terms (or looked them up on dictionary.com) I really started to enjoy the book. The author paints a rich vivid portrait of the "Quattrocento" period that left me wishing someone would turn the book into a movie because it would be a visual treat. The main character actually does some time travel in the book which usually drives me nuts (I hate losing track of which century someone is in) but it's done so skillfully in this book that it didn't bother me.

The fact that it starts in my favourite room in the museum doesn't hurt either. I definitely recommend this book, whether you've been to the studi0lo or not.

April 12 of 12

I believe that after over a year of doing 12 of 12's, this is the first time I've ever uploaded the pictures ON the 12th!!! Go me! So, I actually totally forgot about it until lunch. Well, I knew about it, I just didn't have ANY time. With year end having just passed and the bookeeper in today, my office was like Grand Central so it wasn't really conducive to taking pictures. The first shot I got during the day was of the beautiful cherry blossoms that I park under each day at lunch. The smell so wonderful. I love this time of year!

I had a good mail day today. An official letter from WLU welcoming me to the school (the acknowledgment I've been looking for!) and a CM workshop gift certificate as a thank you for referring a friend to a local CMC.

On the way back to work I treated myself to a Dark Cherry Frappacino with the gift card I got from my cousin a few days ago. It came in thank you card for letting them stay with me during the Olympics.

My cousin mentioned this book in her Facebook status. It's VERY different from what I usually read but it's extremely captivating already. I'm only a little way in to it but I really want to find out what happens next.

The picture on the left is symbolic but it requires a lot of explanation. First the time, I left the office at 5 (I get off at 4:30) That means I was in my car listening to my radio at 5pm which means it's on FM2/CH6 which means it's on 94.1 KMPS out of Seattle. Why? Because at 5pm Tony Thomas plays his "Five O'Clock Test Track". Today was Dierks Bentley's new single called "Up On The Ridge" Love new music from Dierks!!!

I had a new recipe I wanted to try so I stopped at the grocery store for broccoli and parmesean cheese...$30 later...well you get the picture :P

This is the recipe. It's a super simple one from Kraft. My finished product is on the left.

After dinner I headed out to my last regular evening of Square Dance. I was glad that it landed on the 12 of 12 because I wanted to capture it but I didn't expect having so MUCH to capture! We had the graduation for the new dancers. The club president enlisted me to put grad caps on each of the dancers. When I finished I realized there was an extra one. It was for ME! I actually technically progressed from beginner to Mainstream in April 2007 but I was in Texas when that grad ceremony happened so I missed out. I got my certificate but not everything that went with it. It was really special to be recognized and included in the celebrations tonight. Kind of symbolic as well because I'm "graduating" from this group of friends and going out in to the big world! One person said "just think, the next cap you'll wear will be black - when you graduate university". I have to admit, I've been so focused on STARTING school that the idea of FINISHING hasn't really even been on my mind. Realizing what I'm committing to is huge and exciting.
What followed was an evening of fun and silliness. Have you ever tried to dance with paper bags on your feet? The worst part is simply how loud it is!!! LOL

A few weeks ago we had a "recycle sale". Everyone brings the square dance clothes that they're not wearing anymore and offers them up for sale. I got rid of most of the stuff I don't wear at our Fall sale but this Spring I brought my club jacket in. (You can see it in the last picture of my first 12 of 12 post here" I can't remember if I actually paid anything for it or if I was just given it so I decided to pass it on to someone at no charge. Mostly I just didn't want it sitting in a box because I won't be wearing it. Maureen (middle) just happened to be downstairs when I went down to find a lucky soul to adopt my coat and since it fit her, I gave it to her. She's a new dancer so I thought it was appropriate. This evening, as a thank you (because I wouldn't accept money) she brought me this plaque. It says "DREAM: Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars" She also included a little note that reads "

Dear Heidi, When I was in nursing school, I had a sign over my study area that said Though semesters never last, tough students do". I couldn't find that one, so I hope this one will do.

Thanks again for the jacket. We will miss your friendly smiling face at square dancing. I am sure you will do well with your studies.

Best of luck! Maureen.

She had no way of knowing but this plaque is extra special because "DREAM" is my One Word for 2010 and I didn't have anything to represent it. I made sure to tell her and I know this is one thing I'll find room to bring with me to Ontario.

The club also gave me a card with a special name tag that says "Missing Link". That choked me up a bit. I guess it's the first of many goodbyes! I'd better get used to this!!!

So there we go, a 12 of 12 posted before 12 on the 12th! Woohoo!!!

Around the World in 80 Days

Last year I discovered a series of books by Laura Jensen Walker, called the Getaway Girls, well, I say series but I have only read two books. The third was just released this month. The premise of the books is that the girls read a book and then go on an adventure based on the story. The books are full of quotes and book recommendations and considering how much I love reading, they`re perfect for me.

One of the book suggestions was Around the World in 80 Days. I picked the book on cd up from the library a few days later and absolutley fell in love with the story. It`s smart and funny, very fast paced and even a love story. I`ve been raving about the book ever since.

A few weeks ago I heard that a local theatre group was doing the stage show. Mom and I made plans to go, and tonight was the night. It was fantastic. It is billed as a ``comedy adventure adapted by Mark Brown``. There are only five actors and each of them play many, many parts. They were all extremely talented and even though you knew it was the same actors, a few props, slight costume changes and an accent or two thrown in made you forget that it was a familiar face.

The stage show was just as enjoyable as the book had been. I recommend it just as highly as before I saw the show, actually, more so now :)