A Pocketful of Licorice

read more, run more: January recap

So, instead of my usual long list of resolutions, this year I kept it simple and made two. Two goals, actually. Ones that I can measure. 

1. To read at least 2 books per month. 

2. To run at least 16 miles per week. 

Here's my January report: 

I read...

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

And about 1/3 of The Social Animal by David Brooks

Freedom is awesome. Definitely read that one. 

And I ran:

83.38 miles

(which is about 18.8 miles per week).

My running milestone for the month was 5 miles in 45 minutes (9 minute miles). Which is fast, for me. I've been working on speed since I'm on the treadmill until spring. When I started running again back in November I was really slow. Like 11 minute mile slow. So I'm pretty happy to be able to do 9 lately. 

I should probably break the miles up into 4 4-mile runs, but I tend to push it at the beginning of the week to make sure I get the miles in. The treadmill at the gym makes me stop running after 70 minutes, which is annoying. 

By the way, that's one of my February Cocoa Daisy layouts up there. 

I'll post the rest of them tomorrow. 

Science!

So, I got this area sort of set up, but I'm probably not finished. It doesn't look quite right to me yet. So far, I like the chair and the bookcase next to each other. I think I like the lamp and the by-color book arrangement. Though, in general, I don't like bookcases completely full of books. I prefer the books broken up with other stuff, so I might change this up a little. I like the old picture of my dad, but I don't like the frame anymore. The picture is sort of stuck to the glass. Not sure how that happened. 

And I like the top part. Brachiosaurus got painted pink. I don't think pink is any less realistic than his former bright green. He could have been pink. If you can't prove it wasn't then it could have been. That's just science. He is strolling past the lovely beach vista of my Salvation Army painting, approaching my Crooke radiometer. Though in this position, the radiometer never really gets direct sunlight. Ergo, it never spins. Sigh. You can't have everything, I guess. 

I think wall art is in order next.  Any suggestions?

things I found in the attic (i.e. I am a nerd.)

Today it looks like this outside...

which means I didn't have to go to work. Since I'm moving at the end of the month, I decided to try to empty a few boxes from the attic. It takes me forever to do tasks like this, and I'm terrible about saving certain things. I want to go through every box and look at every item. I know, I totally sound like one of the subjects on Hoarders. It's not as bad as that. I'm actually really good about getting rid of clothing and home goods that aren't being used. But other things. Oh man. I can't. 

For example, these...

Just a small selection of notebooks I've saved. These are some from college. I'm pretty sure I've got high school notebooks up there too. I'm really bad about saving old school stuff. I'm not sure why I feel compelled to keep these things. I really loved school. Loved taking notes, loved learning, loved writing papers.

Being in a classroom was one of my favorite things. Maybe I feel that in getting rid of these, I'll be losing that part of my life. (OK, that sounded like a hoarder thing to say.) But look at my beautiful notes! Those are from Development of Western Civ.

I spent quite a while going through old college stuff and found...

 My favorite ever thesis paper. It's on The Communist Manifesto and Robinson Crusoe. 

And evidence that I used to be able to do physics.

even though I clearly didn't care for it. Ironically, I appreciate the beauty of physics much more today than I did back then, but have lost the math skills necessary to do it. I used to be good at calculus. 

The stuff from that box is now separated into three groups. Some stuff has been relegated to the trash. I actually threw away hand-outs and notebooks. Yeep!

Then there's a pile I'm still thinking about. 

And a keep pile. Two notebooks ended up in the keep pile, not so much for the main content as for the asides. I kept my despised physics notebook. It begins a completely earnest effort to capture the essentials of the lectures. And as the year wears on, it becomes this...

Notes interspersed with doodles, quotes and observations. My professor was stereotypically nutty. So I jotted down a lot of the wacky things he said and did. 

A random sampling...

The other notebook that made the cut was from a seminar on Literature and Labor. It was a really great class, and I loved the professor, but the notebook was saved because it is interspersed throughout with notes and quotes about a certain classmate I referred to as Alex, or APK. As in Alex P. Keaton. He was the stereotypical young Republican, hence the nickname. And he said some ridiculous things, many of which are captured for all time.

For example...

 Or this one...

The banshee quotes are actually my favorites. Oh yes, there was more than one...

Here he is referring, of course, to the Great Depression. 

Poor kid. He just rubbed me the wrong way, I guess. Also, I like that on this page, a discussion of Mr. Tulliver (Mr. T, in my notes) from The Mill on the Floss has devolved into the jingle for the Mr. T action figure. My time at Providence College was worth every cent. 

ugh. and...

on this day, he got his own sidebar. The San Francisco of Italy? What does that even mean?

So, obviously, I have to keep that notebook. 

And this is why it takes me forever to make progress on projects like this. Not only do I have to go through each and every thing. I need to photograph them and blog about them, too. It's overwhelming. But I threw away four notebooks today, so that's progress, I guess. 

 

Happy Monday: a short work week and a wish list

Hi everyone! 

Hope you had a great weekend. Nice and relaxing here. Saturday, H went to work for most of the day and I stayed in the loft and did my December layouts for Cocoa Daisy. Previews of those will be coming tomorrow. While I worked, I watched three whole movies. Well, the movies were on and I was half watching them. The Darjeeling Limited and Moulin Rouge are two of my all-time favorites. Then I found Alice in Wonderland on Netflix. I'd already seen it once. I know it didn't get the best reviews but I kind of like it. I'm easily swayed by pretty costumes, though. Plus, I adore Helena Bonham-Carter in almost anything. I think she's brilliant. I've loved her ever since she was Lucy Honeychurch. So that was a nice day, scrapping and movie watching. Then I met H in Davis Square for dinner at Redbones. We had ribs, pulled pork, collards, okra, yams, cornbread. I love that place!

Sunday we ran errands, then I made white chicken chili and H watched football. Now we're winding down, getting ready for a short work week. Only two school days until a five-day weekend!

Here are some lovely books that are currently on my wish list. Mostly art or decorating books. I love flipping through pretty books. 

This one seems so stunning and amazing and fun! I think it would provide endless inspiration. 

One of the home decor books I've got my eye on. Not so much a how-to book, just eye candy. 

Another home design one. This guy has an irreverent style that I kind of dig. 

One of Sabrina Ward Harrison's art journals. I've admired her work for a long time but I don't have any of her books. 

And this one, which I hope will help me avoid a repeat of this year's sad gardening attempt. 

I could go on all day about lovely books I want, but those are at the top of my list right now. 

Another thing I'm excited about is that I've decided to move to a new apartment. It's closer to work and although it's a little more expensive, I've weighed the pros and cons and decided it will be a better place for me. It's also really cute. More on that later, though. 

Hope you all have a great Monday! Yay for holiday weeks!

Monday Books: The Sheltering Sky (spoilers)

Last night I finished The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. 

I have a lot of thoughts about it, but none of them are conclusive. I can't make a decision about what it all means. The premise is that three American travelers come to Northern Africa after World War II in search of a land untouched by war. Port and Kit Moresby are married, but their marriage hasn't been good lately. And their friend Tunner is with them, though I'm not sure why. They don't seem to like him very much and he gets in the way of whatever they're trying to do to salvage their marriage. Port and Kit seem to get along. They just don't sleep together anymore. Port sneaks out at night and sleeps with local girls instead. 

I think one of the important points in the book is the Americans' complete lack of understanding. They don't understand the people and cultures they encounter. They don't understand the desert. And they don't understand the dangers that confront them until it's too late. In the first part of the book, they travel around, wanting very badly to get deeper into the desert. They have disdain for the people and conditions they encounter, although Port isn't above seeking pleasure amongst the common people. One of the women he encounters tells him a story about three women who want to have tea in the Sahara. But they die of exposure and when their bodies are found, their cups are filled with sand. Port doesn't heed the warning and they travel farther south. They stay in a dirty pension, encounter a horrible Australian "mother and son" who may also sleep together and who steal their passports. Then things get really bad. 

By the end of the book's second part, Port has died of typhoid, Kit has disappeared into the desert and Tunner is desperately trying to find her. Port's deathbed hallucinations are about piercing the sheltering sky. The sheltering sky is an illusion. It doesn't actually shelter you from anything. The world is dangerous and individuals are insignificant. 

But it's the third part of the book that's really bizarre. After Port's death, Kit takes off into the desert, joins a caravan, becomes a sex slave/wife of a camel trader. All this, it seems, is to help her not to think about Port and the state of her life. She's trying to shove it away and keep it back. She lives locked in a room in the camel trader's house for an indefinite period of time. His other wives despise her, but when she decides she needs to escape they help her. She gets away. Somehow, someone figures out who she is and they send her back to Algiers on a plane where Tunner is waiting to collect her. But when a woman from the embassy tells her that nothing ever really gets lost in the desert, she takes off again. And that's how it ends. With Kit taking off back into the desert. And all I can figure out about this last part is that Kit is crazy. The desert can make you crazy. 

I still have some more thinking to do. It's a good book and I liked it, but it's weird. 

Monday Books: Home Decor

I have kind of a mini-collection of home decor books. I went through quite a phase a while ago and purchased a bunch of them. It was like ten years ago, when I lived in Delaware, mostly. Apparently, I shopped a lot in Delaware. So some of them are not current, but I still enjoy flipping through them every once in a while, and a lot of the images still appeal to me. The only one I've purchased recently is the Domino book. It's also my favorite. I had to get it because Domino mag went out of business and I missed it so much. 

This one is one of my favorites of the collection. The comforts of home. Atlanta Bartlett's decorating style is sort of minimalist. I always love the look, even though I'm so bad about saving stuff and collecting stuff and having stuff. I sometimes wish I could just get rid of most of it. Things would be so much cleaner. 

In reality, I'm more like this. This style makes it much harder to keep stuff clean and organized. The more you have, the harder it is. I like the look of collections on display, too, if it can actually be maintained. Maybe some people can maintain controlled clutter and keep things clean. I don't think I can. 

In this book, I just like all the different ways she incorporates floral motifs into her rooms. 

I like that the floral is not necessarily in your face. Sometimes it's quite subtle. 

Just a few books worth checking out if you're into interiors and design. 

 

Monday Book Club: This Is Not A Book

I picked this up back in January. It's an interesting concept. Each page starts out with the words "this is..." and gives you some instructions to follow. That is, to interpret however you want, really. The whole point is to get you thinking outside the box. I've used it to try out different lettering styles and paint techniques, among other things.

This page's instructions were to completely cover up the page, I think. Since I completely covered it up, I can't really remember.

I turn to this book (for lack of a better word) when I'm stumped, blocked, lacking creative mojo, etc. I don't really worry too much about messing it up since there are no rules, really, and it's just for me. A lot of times when I'm in a creative rut, just messing around and trying stuff out will inspire me and give me some new ideas. Keri Smith has another, similar, publication called Wreck This Journal. Kind of the same idea as this one.

This Is Not A Book works really well as a source of creative prompts. If you're a scrapper or art-journaler, check it out. It may come in handy next time you're in a rut.

Monday Book Club: I give up.

I think I'm on the verge of giving up on this...

 
It's just so distasteful to me, so far. I have a really hard time putting books aside once I've started them. I stubbornly stick with them, even when I'm not enjoying them. But the other day, I sort of convinced myself that it was OK to give up on this one. About at the point where it is implied that Sebastian (SPOILER ALERT) maybe beat his wife with a wooden board with nails in it. I almost threw up. I hate him so much. That might be irrational, because he isn't real. And it may not be a very intellectual approach to the book. It's just an emotional response. But I really might give up. I took the bookmark out and everything.

What do you guys think? If you aren't enjoying a book, do you just stop reading it? Or do you stubbornly feel like you need to finish what you start?

Monday Book Club: If money were no object...

I would buy each and every one of these.

Penguin has released a series of clothbound classic books designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. They've sort of been all over the place lately. They're pretty incredible.

And then there's the hardbound F. Scott Fitzgerald collection. 

 

Sigh. If only I could justify buying what would, in many cases, be a second copy of a book I already own. Just because they're pretty.

My intention to write about actual books in this space is faltering because, in all honesty, I read MUCH less during the school year. Right now, I'm working on The Ginger Man by J. P. Donleavy, and have been for about a month.

I'm having a Catch-22-style hard time getting into it. Something about the writing style. It's disjointed and choppy. Voice changes frequently. Sometimes you're in the protagonist's head, sometimes not. Sebastian is unlikeable. He's kind of a d-bag. But that's not entirely it. Some of my favorite books have pretty despicable protagonists. Crime and Punishment. Lolita. So I don't think that's it. As I mentioned, I'm not crazy about the style. Also, there isn't a lot of action. We just follow Sebastian around as he goes to bars and fights with his wife and has affairs and is generally alcoholic and lecherous. But besides that, he doesn't do much of anything. At least not yet. Maybe not ever, as the novel is famous mainly for giving a sense of what it was like to be a libertine in post-WWII Ireland. So I'll keep working at it. But my hopes aren't high. 

In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the pretty book pictures.

Love,

Anja

Monday Book Club: cool Goodwill find, Charlie Harper, and teaching dolls to spell

Just wanted to share this great book I found at Goodwill...

 

I kind of have a weakness for old textbooks. Especially elementary school books.  They remind me of playing school with my dolls and stuffed animals. My mom had taught elementary school for a few years before deciding to stay home with us, so she had some grade 1 and 2 reading texts that I got my hands on. Missy and I would spend hours making tests (read: writing out 15 identical copies of said test). Then making our students take the tests (read: filling in 15 identical tests, adjusting the ratio of correct to incorrect answers in accordance with how much we liked each particular toy.) Lynn Damita was one of our star students. She was my Cabbage Patch Kid, so obviously. I also had a stuffed seal from the Mystic Aquarium who was pretty smart. Then there was this raggedy Strawberry Shortcake stuffed doll who got sent to the principal's office every day. She was a real jerk. I'm not sure how she earned our disfavor but for some reason she became our token discipline case.

Anyway, I'm drawn to books like this. So I picked it up off the shelf. And since it was Goodwill, it was only like fifty cents. And then I started looking through it and the illustrations totally sucked me in.

They're so charming! And the more I looked at them the more I thought they seemed familiar. Then I realized they were Charlie Harper illustrations and the book became the most awesome Goodwill find ever! Just to be sure, I checked the credits. Yup! 

I don't always look at the books at Goodwill because it's usually just a bunch of crappy Harlequins, but I'm so glad I looked on that day! I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it, though. Besides have it. And look at it. Which is why I will always have clutter. I'm kind of OK with it, though. Owning a delightfully illustrated book that reminds me, every time I see it, of administering spelling tests to a room full of diligent toys while preventing Strawberry Shortcake from derailing the educational process?  That's totally worth a little clutter.