Loose Leafing: Corona Currently

What better than a pandemic for me to just wander by my blog and pretend I never left it by picking up a totally random blog posting habit?  Honestly, it was really nice Readathonning last weekend and catching up with the bookish community.  I appreciate all of you who stopped by and left a comment and assured me that despite my blog's dormancy I might not be totally shouting into the void.

A few weeks ago (maybe a month?  I don't know.  Time has no meaning anymore), one of my co-workers texted me something like "we should journal during this historic time!" I, being a cynical  jerk, replied something on the order of, "Yeah, that should be stimulating.  Uh, so I woke up.  I ate some food.  Then I ate some more food.  I scrolled the news.  I took a nap. I woke up and it was still daylight out, so I took another nap.   I woke up and tried to watch a briefing from my nation's leader about a widespread crisis.  After only a few minutes, I was forced to turn it off because listening to petty, self-aggrandizing prattle and outright lies was really too much to take on top of the whole killer virus thing.  Then I cooked and ate more food and went to bed after playing a few hours' worth of Cooking Craze on my iPhone to dull the anxious thoughts in my brain to a dull roar."  Clearly, the world has been missing this exciting account of life during the coronapocalypse.

But I don't know, maybe she had a point about the journaling.  So here we are, and here's a little "currently" for the corona age.

Reading: If there's one thing I can say for the quarantine period, it definitely has given a boost to my reading life.  Spending so much time in the company of all my unread books steadily glowering at me has finally made me dig into that TBR stack.  While my concentration was off for the first few weeks in March, April has lead to excellent reading.  I'm well ahead of my usual pace of the last few years and I feel like I'm just reading....better.  With more uninterrupted time, I've found it way easier to get lost in books like I used to before the demands of my job started sucking up so much of my headspace.  I just finished My Dark Vanessa which was hard to read but also amazing, and this morning I'm starting Nation by Terry Pratchett to kick off a month-long Litsy challenge.

Current reads with a cameo from Mo the Surviving Succulent

Feeling Guilty:  I'm still working, and I hate it.  I work for healthcare IT, and the demands on my productivity level are still sky high.  While other people are binging their 18th Netflix show, I'm spending even the waning hours of Friday afternoon discussing the vagaries of how to interface next generation sequencing results to a new lab system and lamenting a to do list as long as my arm.  I should be (and in my mind, if not my heart, I am) glad to have a job, glad to be able to work from home, glad for a lot of blessings that have been bestowed upon me during this time.  But being expected to work at a very high functioning level with added roadblocks of remote work during this emotionally taxing time is hard.  It's getting easier as my focus returns to pre-pandemic levels, but still hard. 

On Spending Wisely: Lately I've been trying to do some good with what I've got.  Like it or not, I am still working, so I've been trying to make at least a small difference with the proceeds.  So many people and organizations are in need right now.  This is a tough headspace, too.  With so much need, it's hard to know where to direct your money to have the greatest impact.  That said, directing it anywhere is better than being overwhelmed by need and not directing it all, so I think I'll probably soon be making another round of donations and probably buying some more local takeout and otherwise trying to be purposeful and thoughtful with my funds during this time. 

Watching: Next to nothing, oddly.  I've been trying to keep up with the shows that are going on over at Andrew Lloyd Webber's channel and also with John Krasinski's Some Good News.  Other than that it's usually one random show on Hulu a day while I eat dinner and scroll the news after work.  TV binges have oddly not been a part of my quarantine life.  I'm gravitating more toward music and audiobooks and the occasional podcast for some reason.

Really Missing:  1 - Making travel plans.  I worked myself beyond the point of burnout this past winter and spring hoping for the promise of some time away, you know, now-ish.  Time away that I thankfully didn't lock in because of the niggling worry back in February that that virus everybody wa talking about might become...a thing.   So now that I have honed my burnout to fine point and am still grinding away at work, the potential loss of any vacation at all has been particularly painful.  2 - Baseball.  I hope there is some sort of baseball season eventually.  Summer isn't summer without baseball.  3 -Seeing other humans in person (I mean, duh).  I live on my own so isolation is very, very isolating.  I think some people long for my situation, but I long to have somebody to talk to to get out of my own head.  4 - Decent weather.  But for this weekend, Pennsylvania has not had much great weather on offer.  Great weather makes everything so much more bearable. 

Ok, so my favorite HelloFresh meal is not photogenic at all.  It's delicious, ok?  

Appreciating: 1 - HelloFresh.  I've been a subscriber for quite a while now, and now more than ever it's been great to have the fixings for meals just delivered to my door, and stopping the working/news scrolling grind to cook myself a real meal every other day has been consistently refreshing.  That said, I've taken to calling it "hot zone" fresh because it gets packed and delivered from Newark, New Jersey.  No, the irony of my living in rural Pennsylvania and getting my "fresh" food delivered from Newark doesn't escape me.  Thanks for asking.  2 - Technology.  I'd much rather meet for church in person, but I love that even though we can't, I can still stream a church service or few every Sunday.  3 - this is idiotic, but my aunt got me this punny calendar for Christmas, and I love it.  I don't know what it says about this year that stupid calendar puns are really a high point for me, but they are.

So wonderful, so terrible the puns.

On Stopping the Madness: I consumed a lot of news in March.  I stopped consuming so much in April.  It has made a very big difference in my quality of life between the two months.  Next up, I'd like to stop spending so much time with iPhone in general.  But sometimes the social media scrolling yields up some true gems and the brain numbing of a phone game or two can occasionally prove helpful.  I feel.....conflicted.

Coming Soon: Yellow!  Having read up on the privileges of being a yellow county...I have discerned no actual change for my own life.  However, it seems some other people get to go back to work, though, so I guess that's good....?  Here's hoping the slow opening achieves its ends and we can have both a functioning economy and health.

Quote of the Week (see all "Things You Thought You'd Never Say in Real Life"):  "The grocery store was much better this week even though I kept missing things and having to take laps of the one-way aisles. At least they were playing music, so I could listen to Ed Sheeran instead of a constant dystopian loop of social distancing instructions."  

That's all from me for now.  How's the coronapocalypse been treating you?

Loose Leafing: Currently

Doing: Aging.  It's my birthday.  I'm getting.....oldish.

Reading:  I was reading and enjoying Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee, but I took a quick break to read Wonder by R. J. Palacio when I found out the book group I (very sporadically) attend will be discussing it next Friday.  Wonder is great so far - I started it yesterday on Kindle and only have about 30% to go.  It's the first book in a while that I lost track of time and accidentally stayed up too late reading - hello, 1:30AM!

Anticipating: Spring.  It hasn't been especially snowy in my neck of the woods, but it certainly has seemed first colder, and now just generally more rainy, overcast, and dismal than usual.  Despite no indication in temperature or conditions (the nor'easters keep blowing through at a good clip), my birthday is usually when I start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  It's cold today, but sunny, and there's something in the light that makes me think spring.

Buying: Books, naturally.  At the winter library book sale, on my Kindle, from Books-a-Million.  At this rate, I'm going to need to be even more brutal about DNFing the bad and the mediocre to keep up with my problem.  So far, so good - I've jettisoned approximately 1/3 of the books I've started so far this year.

Also, I bought this blanket from Society6, and I'm pretty sure it's been about the best thing about the season I loathe most.  It's warm, comfy, and funny.  It's been my constant companion for all reading, TV watching, and napping these last couple months. I think I might need a beach towel in the same design to accompany me through the summer....

Cooking: I love to eat good food, but for most of my life, I've had a complete disinterest in cooking.  Lately I've started to realize that my disinterest lies more in planning and shopping for obscure ingredients I'll never use all of and just end up wasting.  So, one of my life goals this year was to join one of those meal delivery services.  Enter one of my co-workers with a free Hello Fresh box.  Two weeks and four meals in, I'm happy to report that given all the necessary ingredients and a certain level of instruction, I can, indeed, cook.  All four meals have been good (number 5 to be prepared tonight), and I'm pretty super stoked to have culinary variety back in my life along with a nice ego boost stemming from the fact that I am not actually an incompetent cook (just a lazy one, LOL!).

Tex Mex Tilapia!  I made that!

Watching:  Ever since I moved to my new place and subscribed to all the streaming services so I could skip buying cable, I've been dying for the TV show ER to stream all its episodes somewhere so that I could re-watch.  Thanks to Hulu my TV dreams have come true.

I took a break to take in the Olympics - snowboarding and the freestyle skiing are where it's at for me - where the coverage was uncommonly good, for the most part.  But other than that, ER is the star of this girl's winter....and probably spring and summer....man, there are a lot of episodes to see!

Planning:  Trips.  I kind of got way behind the eight ball last year planning travel but still lucked out on a few mini vacations.  Not getting fooled again this year.  I've already got all the money down on my portion of a lake house rental in Cooperstown, NY this August with my family, decidedly a different type of vacation than I've ever taken.  Relaxing instead of on the go, and with a good chunk of my family, too, should be an interesting departure from the norm, and hopefully a good one!

Private water front?  Yes, please.

Then, just recently, one of my best and oldest friends accepted a job in Washington state.  I volunteered as tribute to road trip with her across the nation at the end of May, and we are starting to lock in the plans.  I traveled out west to Montana once upon a time with the intention of taking a job there, but it didn't work out as planned.  I'm surprised and a little excited to have the opportunity to take another cross country road trip.  This time in better weather and without the stress of my having to start a new life at the end of it.

What have you been up to lately?

Loose Leafing: Currently

It's been forever since I've just written a nice little (little, bwahaha! Yeah, I'm so concise) personal post about what's happening in my life, the universe, and everything.  Usually because nothing much is happening.  Nothing much is happening this week either.  I just, uh, bought more stuff than usual and feel compelled to tell people about it.  But let's pretend that not what it's all about and start out with what I'm...

Reading:  Just finished Kevin Baker's 650-some page historical Dreamland, the longest book I've read since....wait for it.....2012.  I know I tend to shy away from really large books on occasion because I am the slowest reader, but I still can't believe it's been that long since I read a really long book.  Thanks go to Kindle for making it seem much more approachable than, say, an epically large hardback.  I enjoyed the book, though I did think there were a few storylines that could have been dispensed with.  Review to come.  Also, I'm accepting pats on the back for having actually read a few e-books this year thus far instead of just buying cheap ones by the dozen. 

Anyhow, I've decided to take a break from the overlong and the very literary with Kasie West's The Fill-In Boyfriend, which is proving enjoyable, and just the YA romance-y thing I need right now.

Watching: Baseball!  I'm so excited to have just subscribed to MLB.TV at a steeply discounted Father's Day discount (Happy Father's Day to...me?).  I used to watch a ton of baseball when I was younger (I was a crazed Yankees fan - still a fan, just less crazed now), but I didn't get to watch too much when I was living with my parents. Then when I moved I cut the cord and went to all streaming TV which is great but not so friendly to the sports lover.  So now, I will stream all the baseball. 

Hating:  Social media in the wake of any national tragedy.  Or even less, say, "widespread" tragedy.  I hate how being so easily in communication with each other seems to encourage more division instead of less.  I hate that we skip right over grief and sympathy to get to fear, anger, judging, arguing, and self-righteous, often uninformed, political rhetoric.  I can't help feeling like this immediate, often insensitive reaction to everything that ever happens plays as big a role in our extremely disturbing political climate right now as anything else. 

On a lesser scale, I am hating screen fatigue.  I have a computery job, and I'm starting to realize that my lack of blogging has less to do with lack of time then it has to do with lack of interest in gazing at a computer screen for a couple more hours after doing it all day.  Most weekdays, I'm actively repulsed by the idea of computers by the time I get home, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Loving:  Summer.  I am, on the whole, so much more ambitious and social and active in the summer, and with the ankle breaking incident, it's been even longer than usual since I've been ambitious and active.  It's been great hanging out with friends and family and having leftover ambition to read and blog with more regularity.  Also, I love that the hanging plant that I bought 5 weeks ago is still alive.  Unprecedented!  His name is Robert.  (Robert Plant?  Get it?  I'm sorry, my whole life is pretty much just a really long dad joke).

Traveling: Speaking of life in the post-ankle break world, I was stoked to discover that my recently unbusted ankle, though not completely back to its former self, will now tolerate some light vacationing, something I've been worried about for a while.  My dad and I took a short vacationlette to Baltimore and rode the Water Taxi and shopped/ate our way around Fells Point and shopped at the awesome Inner Harbor Barnes and Noble (okay, so we shop a little much when we're together) and took in a baseball game - Yankees vs. Orioles.  It was good to get away for the first time in a long time, and I'm duly encouraged that I'll be able to do a little more of that again!

Buying:  All the things!  I went to a book sale and bought some books this week (though, admittedly fewer than usual).  I bought a mystery box of lovely fake flowers made from recycled materials from  Eco Flowers after being mercilessly prodded by a friend.  Glad she's a good "salesgirl."  I love my flowers!  The OrganATTACK card game from Awkward Yeti, the only comic I've ever been known to fangirl over.  So hilarious and on point.  This t-shirt from Montgomery Biscuits because, come on, that mascot is adorable regardless of whether I've ever been to Alabama or like the Tampa Bay Rays or whatever.  Cute mascot and their team store is called the Biscuit Basket!  And, oh, somebody stop me.  Really. 

Pondering: Having an actual schedule and a linky for the Choose Your Own Comment Adventures.  Okay, I pondered having a schedule for about a minute before I decided that would probably wreck at least half the fun for me.  You know, obligations and me being kind of contrarian and the screen fatigue and everything.  But a linky, maybe?  I dunno, would any of y'all play along with me and link up even if I wasn't on a specific schedule?  Maybe I just post one, say, once a week (any day!) and if anybody happens to have an adventure that week, they can link up?   

That's all for me this week.  Hope you're having a lovely Sunday!

A Cure for What Ails the Disconnected Book Blogger

Greetings all and welcome to my fair and neglected blog!

I've been having blogger guilt lately, but not the usual blogger guilt. You know, the guilt that says, "You should write more book reviews! You should have clever features and pretty pictures and stop planning to do bloggy community things and then failing to follow through!" I know if I applied myself, and sacrificed some Netflix time, I could fill this blog with lovely content. What's been bothering me lately isn't that I'm not really doing a stellar job of blogging but more that I'm doing an even worse job of commenting. I might be able to fire a post or two off into the void every now and then, but I've been dreadful about commenting back, meeting new people, everything except fulfilling the bare obligation to breathe life into my languishing blog once in a while.  Happily I have a few stalwart commenters that despite my considerable lack as a blogger, don't leave me alone to shout about books into nothingness. (Thanks, guys!!)

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one in this boat.  It seems like half the blogs I visit have so few comments these days. I sometimes feel like we (er...I?) traded in book blogging community for shouting into the emptiness in the name of getting a few new books. That or we're so overwhelmed by the wealth of social media that we've traded in trying to have meaningful blog exchanges with each other for 140 character chatter or that perfectly posed coffee and a book picture on Instagram.

This was nowhere more apparent to me than when the decision was made to no longer cheerlead on blogs for the 24 Hour Readathon and only do the cheering on Twitter.  There's nothing wrong with Twitter cheerleading (I've done it, it's fun, especially late in the evening when everybody's getting punchy), and I mean no offense to the organizers who do such a great job of wrangling such a large event into submission. Alas, when I saw that, a part of me felt like a little bit of the heart fell out of the Readathon.  It was too time consuming, too difficult for us to engage one another on the very social media that spawned the Dewey's Readathon to begin with....blogs.  Book blogs. 

I wish I could say I handled myself maturely, but the most maturity I could muster was to not sign up to cheer and if I couldn't say something nice, I decided I would say nothing at all.  Today I was all ready to whip up some primo content (read: a few clumsily worded book reviews), and I said to myself as I too often do these days..."Self, what's the point of writing these reviews if you're going to carry on being such a half-assed member of the book blogging community?" 

At that point, instead of dejectedly going to clean the bathroom or some other only marginally rewarding domestic chore that I claim takes up so much of my time that I can hardly spare the time to write blog posts....instead of that, I had an idea.  I daresay it may even be a good idea.  In fact, this post was supposed to actually embody the fruit of that idea, but it's already grown too long under the weight of my musings, so you may have to wait a day or two to see....Choose Your Own (Commenting) Adventure!  A way for me to plug myself back into the book blogosphere, put a fire under my butt to comment more, and have content for my blog!

Instead of being constrained by the dutiful emptying of my Feedly, another place where blogging fun becomes a joyless obligation, I decided to leave a comment on the first post in my reader this morning that had a comment, then visit the first commenter on that post and so on until I had visited 10 blogs linked by their commenters.  Admittedly, I cheated a bit to keep my journey in the book blogosphere and out of niches where I genuinely didn't have much to say. 

Tomorrow or the next day, I plan to write up my short adventure around the blogosphere in that old "blog carnival" style.  Just a little link and a blurb for everyone I visited (in addition to my comments on their actual blogs).  It was great fun - I really read people's posts instead of just skimming them on my phone.  I thought of something at least semi-worthwhile to say to each.  I found a bunch of new to me blogs and stopped by a few old friends.  With any luck, it's something I'll start doing and writing about on a regular basis.  With any luck, maybe a few folks will join me in choosing their own commenting adventure.

What do you think?  Is commenting and feeling like a part of the larger book blogging community something you struggle with? 

Another Day in the Life

Good day, all, and welcome, to another boring day in the life of me!  Trish from Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity is hosting the second round of her Day in the Life event, where we get to chronicle and share our days with each other.  Much to my surprise, last time it was actually really fun to write about my day in all its boring glory and even more fun to read everyone else's so I was more than happy to play again.  I chronicled last Tuesday since it was a little more exciting than the average day, though I totally took most of the pictures on Friday, because I forgot on Tuesday and also I am a cheater.  Anyhow, here it goes...

6:30 AM - Alarm goes off interrupting a vaguely disturbing dream that may be indicative of my watching too many crime TV shows lately.  It's earlier than usual, and it's the week after the spring time change so it feels even earlier, but I've got to be to work early.  I stretch out my Frankenankle (That's the ankle they surgically put back together after I broke it last summer, if you were wondering.  I usually just call him Frank.) and its accompanying leg, and then head for the shower. 

 7:30 AM - Usually I like to read a few pages over a bowl of cereal, but alas, there is no time for that today.  Cereal stays tucked in its cupboard.  Joe Meno's Marvel and a Wonder remains nestled on the cluttered coffee table, all sad and neglected.

7:45 AM - I have a super short commute now.  Unfortunately, the commute from the parking lot in to the hospital where I work takes almost as long as the commute from my apartment....

8:00 AM - Say the briefest of hellos to my desk before before bidding it a fond farewell.  Normally, I would take time to be disappointed in how deeply unfun my office area looks, but today, I have important work to do, or so they tell me.

8:10 AM - Today is all about this thing.  Meet Remmy (name has been changed to protect the innocent).  He's a very tall (Dark? Handsome? Er...nope), computer operated storage closet of sorts for all the lab's supplies.  I've heard myths that some places achieve their Rem install in a mere three days.  At my place of employment, where we like to do things the hard way, it's more like a year and three days.  The vendor rep we work with is on site for the third time.  He's been working with us for so long that my employer should probably just start paying directly into his retirement account.  My project partner in crime and I are cautiously optimistic that our pilot might actually get off the ground this time.

11:00 AM - Haggle among six people the right size space for supply after supply after supply.  I silently lament that my two years in lab almost-IT has come down to efficiently reorganizing what has essentially become the lab's giant junk drawer.

12:10 PM - We break from our exciting morning of space allocation for lunch.  I drop a contact on the floor before we manage to head to the cafeteria.  Happily, one of our developers is there and helps me find it thus saving the day from utter ruin.  Someone would literally have to take me home.  I'm blind as a bat.  I give it a rinse and jam it back in my eye, stopping for only a moment to wonder how long it will take my eye to start necrosing.  That's a fancy lab term for "rotting." The floors around here aren't exactly sanitary. 

12:30 PM - With the addition of the Remteam, lunch is filled with startling revelations about air travel for the super tall, hunting in Maine, and the absence of peanut butter in Europe.  There are places without peanut butter.  I am deeply appalled.

1:30 PM - Return to dynamic storing. The word "dynamic" really makes it sound like it might be interesting.  Don't be fooled.

2:30 PM - Break from storing to switch our other storage units back to their original server.  Take a lap of the labs getting people to log out of the software and enduring light, mostly good-natured ridicule from lab staff.

3:20 PM - Server switch completed, validation successful.  Another problem solved?

5:00 PM - Yay, workday is over!  Normally I would retire to my apartment to sloth about watching The Voice and spend a lot of truly unedifying time scrolling through my Facebook feed.  Tonight - cautiously celebratory wing night with the Remteam!

 Waiting for the bus that will take me to my car (in the next county) which will take me for wings.

6:00 PM - Table is paved with wings and cheese fries.

6:30 PM - Stomachs are paved with wings and cheese fries.

7:30 PM - Home.  I'm single and live on my own, so good news, as long as I'm okay with living in semi-squalor and rewearing the same pants tomorrow as I did yesterday, there's still plenty of time for slothing about watching The Voice on Hulu while liking cute pictures of my friends' babies on Facebook.  Yay squalor!

9:30 PM - Finish watching The Voice.  I could do something productive, but it's more fun to consider taking a sweet European vacation with a friend I haven't seen in forever to a place that looks like this.  Actually, a place that is this...

10:30 PM - Time for bed.  One more day of stimulating dynamic storage awaits!

Loose Leafing: Trouble on Re-entry

 Belated happy holiday wishes to you and yours, and I hope you are already enjoying a happy new year! 

I live here. Apparently.

I dropped off the internet for a while there like I do.  December was neither a very good blogging month nor a very good reading month for me.  I was more than a little disappointed that I didn't get much reading in.  I started last year off with a reading bang, but I definitely finished it with a whimper, trailing off just short of 40 books read.

If my reading fell short, it was because I was a little busy with my life.  After 3 months of broken ankle seclusion and dependence, I finally got to start doing some walking and was occupied with the trappings of rejoining the world already in motion.  Going from doing nothing but sitting around my apartment to doing PT twice a week and heading back to work and generally getting back to semi-normal activity has been welcome but not easy.  Add in the extra activity of the holiday season, some car trouble and the unfortunate need to support a grieving friend, and it felt like I was trying to jump on a moving train Dauntless-style, only with a few notable impediments.  Most of December, by the time I got home in the evening, my brain was so mushy that only Netflix would do to pass the sleepy hours between work or PT and an acceptable hour for bedtime for a grown-up.

 

Train does not stop for the walking impaired

 

It's been good, though.  I was Tiny Timming it by Christmas (that's "down to only one crutch" for those of you who prefer political correctness in your dealings with handicapped literary characters).  It was nice to be able to attend all the requisite holiday festivities with a free hand for carrying delicious foods around.  Bonus points for getting to reply, "God bless us, every one!" to people mocking my semi-crutched status.  By New Years, I could hobble around crutch-free for short distances.  It's not easy, but life seems to be improving bit by bit.

 Disclaimer: No one carried me like this.

I've had a pretty quiet start to the new year.  I've been feeling kind of dull and uninspired, so no resolutions have been forthcoming, but I think one of the things I'd like to do this year is look for the good.  I have a tendency to see the bad in everything, so it's refreshing to try to reflect on what looks like an average day and find something good to note about it.  Once I start seeing some good, I'd like to make some good, too.

Reading is off to a glacial start.  I'm on pace to finish my first book of the year...tonight.  Instead of reading, I've been trying to take back my apartment after months of having no choice but to let housekeeping things go and also taking advantage of my sparkly new Blu Ray player to enjoy watching The Hobbit and Harry Potter movies all over again.  Winter is made for movie marathons, am I right?

 What have you been up to so far this year?

Loose Leafing: The Broken Ankle (Good?) Life

Good morning!  It's the glorious Sunday of a holiday weekend.  Honestly, I'm surprised that I even remembered that because I pretty much do the same things every day now regardless of weekdays, weekends, and holidays because ankle - still broken.  Or at least, still healing.  Even though I'm the sort of person specially adapted to stationary activities, being a reader and a blogger and TV fan to boot, I have to say this whole broken ankle recovery thing is still almost more mentally and emotionally taxing than it is physically painful.  Friday marked three weeks since the injury and my two week "surgiversary," and also two weeks since I've stepped foot out of my apartment.  It's definitely a struggle both to do anything for myself and to have to depend on others to do the many things I find myself unable to do, so there's really no winning.  It's a little too easy to get down and depressed when everything you used to do easily seems about impossible, but you know what?  At the same time I've found so. very. many. things (and people!!) to appreciate both big and small while I've been home bound, and that should make for some much better reading (and thinking!).  So, how about some broken ankle good stuff?

Netflix - Netflix is my home slice.  It has so much good stuff to watch.  Seriously.  I'm loving revisiting old episodes of Frasier, which has brought me a lot of laughs when I've needed them.  I also discovered the Chopped collection which is much more fun to watch when you don't have to wait through those "cliffhanger" commercial breaks.  Whose dish is going to be chopped? 

The Lion Sleeps Tonight radio  - Some time ago I made a Pandora station based on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," and it is so great.  You can not be sad while listening to the upbeat hits of the 50s and 60s.  Trust me, you really just can't. 

Books - Obviously, right?  I just finished Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell, which I seem to have liked better than a lot of people.  Also, I'm working my way through the Monument 14 series by Emmy Laybourne, at the recommendation of my mom.  It's perfect fast reading YA post-apocalyptic goodness.  I'll have the second book finished today for sure.

Rejuvenating the blog  - I have been meaning to do this for sooooo long now.  It's been good to have the time to sit down and write some reviews again and, even more, to take the time to visit and comment on other blogs which I haven't really done well even when I was doing a better job of keeping the blog afloat. 

Friends and Family - I hope it's obvious at this point that these blessings are graduating from the small to the large.  If it weren't for my family and friends I would have gone insane probably about 2 weeks, 6 days, and 23 hours ago.  I have been incredibly blessed to have numerous family members and friends from church and prayer group stopping by, bringing food, encouraging me and distracting me.  My co-workers and my boss have been incredibly supportive (not to mention the generous PTO structure of my organization that is allowing me to get paid for the time I'm forced to take off).  Even my friends and family who live at a distance have been calling and texting and sending me care packages that lift my spirits.  My figurative cup has been running over with company and home cooked food and puzzle books and coloring books and cookies and candy and everything.  On one hand, I can't remember the last time I felt so helpless.  On the other hand, I can't remember the last time I felt so well loved.

My Mom and Dad - A step above the rest of the family.  ;-)  My mom and dad have done everything for me while I've been going through this.  They practically carried me to the car to go to the ER the night I broke myself.  My mom has selflessly dropped her life to be here helping me do things that used to be easy and are now impossible for me to do alone, dealing with my upkeep and occasional miserable moods, and running endless errands on my behalf.  My dad delivered me a Smart TV at the beginning of the broken ankle odyssey and has been holding down the fort at home to free mom up for me.  Hopefully I'll be getting better at this broken ankling soon, so I can give my mom some time back, but she's totally been my lifeline these three weeks.

So there you have it, my bright sided acknowledgements of everything that's been good about breaking my ankle.  What's good in your life this week?

Loose Leafing: Bouts of Books and Broken Ankles

Have you heard the one where I spent all of early summer getting ready to move to a new apartment and finally actually moving out of my parents' house?  Then the one where I spent most of mid-summer working like a dog at my job while the lab I work for got moved into its new quarters?  Then maybe the one where mid-August rolled around and I was thinking maybe I can breathe again, read more books, take up blogging again, go on vacation and enjoy myself a little before my favorite season slips away in the blink of an eye?  This weekend I thought there was totally a light at the end of my tunnel.  There was.  Unfortunately, it was a train.

On the very first night of the glorious long weekend I was about the take, I was rescuing a baby from a kidnapper ... I mean, I was rescuing a kitten from a tree... Okay, fine, I was badly underestimating how many stairs I had left to descend to arrive at the bottom of my new apartment's staircase while taking out the trash when I took a tumble and broke my stupid left ankle.  So, here I am with 6 or more wretched weeks stretching out before me of wearing a splint and hobbling around on crutches and generally being a massive invalid, and that's probably the best case scenario.  I feel stupid and in pain and kind of hopeless about the whole thing, and the stairs are no longer just a danger to the clumsy but practically an insurmountable obstacle between me and the wide world.

Happily, my family and friends have already begun to pitch in, bringing me food and medicine and otherwise assisting me in my time of infirmity.  So that's what I can see if I try to look on the bright side.  If I keep looking, I realize I have a million books here to read, and blogging is one of the few things I do that doesn't require much walking, so while vacation and, you know, actual happiness might be slightly beyond my reach, finally rejuvenating the blog (albeit a little morosely) and participating in next week's Bout of Books (how perfectly timed!) seem much more attainable.  So, here's my official letter of intent to participate...

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 14 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

So I'll be trying to do a little more reading next week instead of a little more binge watching TV series on Netflix while hosting my own pity party.  Wish me luck!

So, how's everyone's summer been while I've been slaving away at my life?  Have you ever broken a bone and lived to tell the tale?  ;-) 

Loose Leafing: Currently

Happy Sunday, world!  It's been a while since we've met which, of course, is my fault, as usual.  Big life changes are afoot, so I've been preoccupied with lots of tasks that don't usually enter my purview.  Let's get right down to it...

Planning...   to move!  I've finally put down a deposit on a little apartment of my very own.  It's farther from most of my family (but still close enough to drop by with ease) but way closer to work and church.  I haven't signed a lease to make it official yet, but I'm expecting to be moving in mid-July.

Purging...  as much heavy stuff as I can stand to part with.  There's nothing like moving to make the stark reality of how much of an overabundance of stuff you have really sink in.  As you may have noted, the book problem is a big one.  I have a lot of them, and they're heavy.  I can maybe fit half of my present book collection into my new digs and hope that my parents will put up with storing a few.  However, I'm trying to unload as many as I can.  There are presently 9 boxes of books awaiting donation on the couch behind me, another probably box and a half waiting to be packed up upstairs, and that's really the tip of the "things I should be getting rid of" iceberg.  Weeding out all my stuff (from heaviest to lightest) is going to be the order of the day for the next month and a half.

Purchasing...  all the stuff I don't have.  Like furniture, kitchenware, a TV, etc, etc.  See, I have all the wrong stuff.  I'm already having some luck, though.  Living in rural Pennsylvania offers its occasional perks, one of which is the opportunity to pick up some decent starter (*ahem* used) furniture and stuff at local yard sales.  Yesterday, I bought a couple lamps, a small kitchen table with chairs, a coffee table, a lightly used Keurig mini that's purported to work, and a lightly used Dyson vacuum cleaner that definitely works - all for under $150.  My grandparents have a sleeper sofa that they're willing to part with, and I am breathing a sigh of relief at not having to spend a fortune up front on furniture and other necessities.

Poking fun at...  San Andreas!  My mom and I love to go to the movies and have got to see a disaster movie at least once a year to enjoy the special effects.  Also, they're fun to make fun of, and we love that, too.  See there are only two qualities of disaster movies: good bad and bad bad.  They are always cheesy, overwrought, and unrealistic, but if they have sufficient cool effects and action to counteract the cheesy overwrought dialogue/acting, they can prove to be very enjoyable.  I'm happy to report that San Andreas definitely falls within the "good bad" camp providing thrills a minute and plenty of opportunities to make fun of cheesy scenes and all those stereotypical disaster movie scenes.  Definitely a fun movie to see at the theater with friends or family that don't take these things too seriously.

Pondering...  announcing an official blog hiatus.  I'm an especially busy girl this summer both at work and at home(s), and I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off taking a little official break from the action here.  So busy am I that even the outlook for taking a real vacation is decidedly dim.  However, there's a stack of books sitting here that I'd really like to get reviewed so I don't have to take them with me, ergo the jury's still out on this one.

Packing...  nothing yet.  I'm not ready!  There's too much stuff!  And no boxes!  Agh!  Moving stress is already creeping on me.  I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to go continue attempting to cut my belongings in half so that I can pack what remains.

(This post has been sponsored by the letter "P" who knows that when you spot a trend, sometimes you should just go with it.)

Hope you're having a more relaxing Sunday than I am!  What are you up to this week?

Loose Leafing: Lately

Time/ 10:16 AM (Saturday, this is totally a scheduled post)

The Scene/ My book cluttered desk, flooded with sunlight that hasn't been making much of a regular appearance lately.

Awaiting/ My chiropractor appointment.  I'm starting to feel like my spine is curling inward like in all those reverse evolution photos with the monkey/man hunched over his computer, but it's probably more of a result of yesterday's brief bout of snow shoveling.

 
Foolishly hoping for/  A "real" snow storm.  Here in Northeast PA we keep getting glancing blows from nuisance snowstorms that clip us and then go on to dump real inches of snow elsewhere.  My crazed inner child, for some reason, cannot be dissuaded from craving at least one major snowstorm a winter, even if my outer adult (who works in a place that's in no danger of ever declaring a snow day) dreads having to deal with the snowy consequences.  Sounds like I might get my wish with the snow coming in tomorrow (er...today?), but it could totally still be a major bust.

Rooting/ For the Seahawks good commercials in the Super Bowl.  Okay, if I have to root for a team, it'll have to be the Seahawks, the lesser of two evils in my opinion, but I don't like either Super Bowl contender this year, especially not the Patriots who squashed my dad's beloved Colts.  Mostly, I'll be eating yummy food at my aunt's party and hoping to get some laughs out of the infamous Super Bowl commercials.

Grateful for/  Great books!  It's so refreshing to start out the year reading really good books.  Everybody, including myself, talks a big game about hitting the ground running in the New Year, reading more books, buying fewer books, writing about the books, enjoying the books, but I've had a hard time doing that the past few years because the books I kicked off my year with were, at best, mediocre.  Starting off your bright, shiny new year with a massive reading slump is hideously discouraging.

I'm happy to report that for the first time in a few years, I didn't ride into the New Year on a tide of fictional mediocrity.  As a result, it would seem, I've read double the amount of books I would read in a typical January, and it feels so good.  (Even if that double amount of books hardly puts a dent in the overwhelming book problem that exists at my house)

Reading/ Just finished Hillary Jordan's "dystopia for grown-ups," When She Woke, and loved it.  Now I'm getting started on Tom Cooper's tale of a collection of bayou miscreants on the hunt for lost pirate's treasure, The Marauders.  I'm closing in on the 50 page mark, but I'm still on the fence about this one.

Watching/ Just finished watching the History Channel's Sons of Liberty miniseries.  Sure, it's rife with historical inaccuracies and dialogue that would never have passed between the lips of the patriots.  That said, I liked the series.  If you're looking for a fact based documentary, look elsewhere, but if you're looking for an exciting re-telling of history (with a little more action and sexier patriots *ahem*) with enough truth about it to actually inspire people to be curious about the real story, Sons of Liberty is a good watch.

Dreading/ The bookshelf cull that will inevitably have to take place this year.  The books are overtaking everything.  It's time to say goodbye to some old friends that will probably never get read (by me), but oh how it pains me to send them off unread...

Eating/  Crispy M&Ms!  They're back!  Now if I could just have a nice snowstorm with a bag of Crispy M&Ms in hand, my inner child would have a total field day.

Failing/ To blog regularly.  Honestly, I've been busy reading.  Also, having a computer based job definitely does nothing to make you run gleefully to your computer after eight hours of computing.  That said, I've got a few great books to review this weekend, so hopefully I can turn this blogging ship around.

So, what have you been up to lately?  Kick the year off with any great books?

Loose Leafing: A Friendship in Bad Selfies

In case you missed the post where I guiltily admitted that if I didn't have the time to write up two or three posts on a weekend, the blog would almost surely go dark for a week, you've just seen it.  Or, wait, maybe you just didn't see it.  I didn't have time to amuse you with my bookish ramblings last week because I was busy catching up with an old friend who came to visit for the weekend.

 That's her (and me) at Walden Pond.

Methinks Thoreau would probably not be impressed.

With this friend, our relationship may be primarily defined by our penchant for taking ridiculous selfies.  I don't remember exactly when it started, but I know it started before "selfie" was made into a legitimate term.  We referred to them as the much clunkier "self-taking photographs." It could have started when I visited her when she was abroad in London while we were both in college.  We took a scenic and also hilarious bus tour through the Scottish Highlands and alienated most of our tour group by being irritatingly reclusive and refusing any and all well-intentioned offers from others to take our picture, instead favoring the juvenile inclination to take selfie "thug shots" at any and all historic landmarks.

Rockin' the porch couch is almost as scary as the future.

Whether it started there or not, I have a fine catalog of ridiculous photos of her and I with lots of chins making stupid faces.  There's the one where we're sitting on my family's discarded loveseat on my front porch in our graduation caps looking intentionally terrified either of the future or of what big hicks we looked like during that brief window of time when we had a "porch couch" to sit on. There's a winner from Thanksgiving where one of us is "drinking" out of the gravy boat.  We even went through a lengthy phase in which we would buy a disposable camera and take ourselves to a nearby amusement park where we would take selfies and crazy shots of each other on various rides.  Secure your loose items?  I think not!  Ergo, I have some fantastic pictures where we look utterly terrified by going through the train tunnel, a backwards taken shot of me being splashed on the log flume, and one of my personal favorites, a shot from the Great Bear at Hersheypark where I'm grinning like an idiot, and the location of the cloud behind me clearly shows that I'm upside down in the sky.  All this even before those great cameras that "officially" take your pictures on all the rides.

 She is a selfie taking professional from way back.

We proved this weekend that it doesn't matter how old you get or how many years its been since you rode a particular roller coaster, when you're a cheeseball like us, you never forget where the camera is, and you definitely don't forget to pose for it.  This past weekend, the first time on the coaster we both spontaneously yanked ourselves from average roller coaster enjoyment to give an enthusiastic thumbs up as we zoomed under the camera. The second time we planned a little better, and that shot elicited the rarest of instances.  We bought the picture instead of just giggling at it on the display screen.  Observe:

 Disclaimer: My face doesn't really look like that...

Usually.

I hope you laughed.  I worked hard on perfecting that look.  It even got some laughs from the guy who was sitting behind us.

Here's a few other highlights from our weekend adventuring.

There's the cute one from the train...

Aww!

 ...and also the one where I look like a scared photo-bombing phantom.

Ahhh!

There's one thing you can say for Crystal and me - for better or worse, we'll always have stupid selfies!

Do you and your friends have any goofy traditions?  

Loose Leafing: Featuring the Bold Return of...

No, not me.  I've been here all week thankyouverymuch. 

No, it's the bold return of "Some people read, some people just buy books."  Library book sale season has finally come to an end, not with a bang but a whimper, you might say, if you were of a literary bent which I presume you are.  Here in the bookstore-less wasteland I call home, there remains one saving grace for the book lover who likes to own books but needs a break from compromising their bookish values to further fatten the coffers at Amazon.  That saving grace, is, of course, the month of June when all the local Friends of the Libraries throw their big yearly book sales (where you can snap up, at a very deep discount, all the books other people probably bought from Amazon) at which time I buy a psychotic amount of books and then return home for the rest of the year to marinate in guilt, shame, back pain, and the occasional actual enjoyment of the acquired books.  This year is no different, except...*casts eyes downward, mumbles semi-incoherently*...I uh think I bought more than the absurd amount I usually do.

The amount of books I bought in the month of June, not even counting the books I acquired by other means (No, not those other means.  Is that really what you think of me?) is so absurdly large that even I have begun to panic and demand a complete moratorium on book buying of myself (Note: this never works.).  Happily for you, while I cower in a corner with my shame and a book I should be reading very quickly (but am probably not, because that's not how I roll), I've also elected to put my house-collapsing array of bookish sins on display for you this very day.

OK, enough talk.  Now, (very low quality) book photography by Megan with the help of the iPhone I should have replaced last summer.  Click on the pics to make them bigger.  Of course, you'll want to see the titles, won't you?  (P.S. This post from here on out will probably look extra-ridiculous in a feed reader.  My apologies.)

Look upon my great piles of new (used!) books and despair!  I mean, look upon my great piles of books and tell me which ones I should definitely get to reading within the next ten years, and the ones that I probably should donate directly back to the library with all haste!

Loose Leafing: The Week That Sucked and Other Low Grade Horrors

Fair warning, this isn't going to be one of those warm, fuzzy gratitude posts.  You may have guessed this from the title.  Now, it's not a eulogy for a pet or a loved one or even my car, happily.  I mean, for sure, this week sucked, but it's sucking in a "you'll laugh about this later after you get a few good nights sleep and the extensive dental work you've been avoiding for years" kind of way.  It's sucking in such a way that may even be able to get you to laugh at me now despite my more less or less continuing low grade wretchedness.  So, here's the story of the week that was.  I mean, the week that sucked.  

 You look friendly enough, but I'm onto your game, Mr. Blood Drop

I let you drain my lifeblood, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt?   Okay, so.  I got this new job, and it so happens that one of my new co-workers is a somewhat crazed lunatic about getting people to donate their blood.  Working in a hospital, opportunities to be abducted by said co-worker and coerced into forfeiting my more valuable bodily fluids are numerous and unavoidable.  It seemed like a worthy, if vaguely terrifying thing to do, so I failed to "just say no" to this particular peer pressure.  Also, I'm thirty years old and have no idea what my blood type is, so what sane person wouldn't give up a pint of it to find out that little tidbit of information?  (I'm A+ if you were wondering.  Put that under your hat in case you might want to give me a kidney some day or something.  I'm kidding.  Or am I?) 

Anyhow, as was my great fear, I suck at giving blood.  All these fine folks dashing in on their lunch break, casting off a pint of blood, downing a cookie, and then off on their merry way just as right as rain?  I am not like those people.  I'm the sad sack that makes a scene by almost getting sick and almost passing out.  Sure everybody was really nice and nobody let me bonk my head on a sharp object and my co-worker, the closet "Donate life!" recruiter girl, kept me company for the overlong time I was there basking in my lightheadedness and vague sense of humiliation, but the experience was none too pleasant.  I hope those three people that can apparently benefit from my blood are enjoying it, because I'm kind of missing it, and the free t-shirt, comfy and oversized as it may be, is no pint of blood.

So, that Tuesday night I retired to my bed exhausted from the work of regenerating my lost pint of blood when along came my next adventure...

Close encounters of the bat kind.  Because who, when busy regenerating their lost vital bodily fluids, doesn't love to wake up at 2:30 AM to find a bat (!!) flying around their bedroom?  Okay, I'm generally not among the super easily frightened, but if the prospect of having a bat bodily collide with you while it's swooping unpredictably around your bedroom in the middle of the night doesn't drive you to scream and scramble into the bathroom where you slam the door and exhale as if you've just escaped being tortured by one of the sicker serial killers to grace Criminal Minds, what will?  (Actually escaping a sick serial killer, you say?  Oh pshaw).  So, here it is 2:30 in the morning...3:30 in the morning...bat has disappeared...but to where?  Three hours of sleep, combing every inch of my bedroom in search of the bat with the amount of tension usually reserved for turning the crank on one of those infernal jack-in-the-boxes, and no bat to be found = not a great way to recover from being a sucky blood donor.

Next night, repeat, only at 1:30 AM, and this time I figure I've discovered batty's entrance and exit point.  I jam the hole temporarily with old socks.  I take to Twitter at 2 AM to congratulate myself on a battle won and use up my stock of creative hash tags.  I am the winner!

 Don't look so smug, Twitter chump.

Next night.  Nope, I'm a big loser.  Discover the bat fluttering around my window before going to bed.  Feel bad about possibly killing him when he's probably really great at eating stupid bugs.  Pin him between inside window and outside screen, and talk my dad into pulling the screen up an inch so the bat can escape and do his batty thing in nature.  He does.  I find a creative use for rolls of pennies, which are decidedly more sturdy than old socks.  I may have won the bat battle, but I've lost the bat war.  Everything that moves startles me.  Awesome.

And in the meantime...

Oh HAAAIIILL no!   That's right, big freak hail storm decimates the expansive parking lots of my workplace.  This is even scarier when your employer ran out of real office space a few departments ago and you're gawking out the window of your office trailer during a tornado warning.  Golf ball to baseball sized hail fell from the sky for a frighteningly long time making my car look like this...

 When hailstones attack....

Thankfully, it didn't look like this (which a lot of people's did):

 ...they can be really big meanies.

But that doesn't mean I'll be spending any less time on the phone dealing with insurance claims.

In the mean meantime.   I have too many teeth.  And it's starting to become really, very unpleasant. The writing on the wall says, "Megan, you are about to become likethis with your dentist," and that is a prospect that frightens me (and my bank account) to no end. 

All that, and I just last evening finally committed the "meh" book I was reading to the DNF pile, and discovered (much too late) an e-mail about a giveaway win in my spam folder, so even books have not been able to suitably lift my spirits this week.

Anyhow, that's my week from hell.  How was your week?

Where've You Been?: The April Edition

Some people post reading recaps every month.   Mine would be awful short, so I've decided to replace my reading recaps with excuses for why I haven't been blogging or reading enough, with verbs!

Adjusting - To this new job.  I used to have a job where I spent a lot of the day walking.  Now I have a computery desk job.  This makes me unlikely to want to spend my evenings with another computer.  Also, it makes me fat from sitting at a desk all day.  With that in mind, it's not surprising that I've joined my new co-workers on their daily lunch walks that get me up and moving away from my desk and burning off a few calories.  The bad news is, when you spend your lunch breaks walking, a good half hour of reading time disappears from your day.

Reading - Occasionally.  LOL.  No, seriously, though.  April wasn't a total wash of a reading month for me.  I did finish The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood  and Ender's Game for the book club that I very occasionally join.  The Wicked Girls was good, and so was Ender's Game.  I'd been meaning to read Ender for quite a while, so it was good to get that final push to pick it up.  I also read a big chunk of Five Days at Memorial which I have been anticipating and avoiding in equal measure.  Finally, this time when I chose it at random, I didn't say, "Argh, non-fiction, I don't think I can!"  I actually picked it up and gave it a shot.  It's compelling but also jaw-droppingly depressing.

Spending - A great day in NYC with a bunch of friends!

Freezing -  Seriously, the cold weather just won't quit.  My dad got us 5 game "season" tickets for a minor league baseball team in our area, but you have to use one set of tickets each month of the season.  We had fun eating overpriced ballpark food and clowning around with the mascot, but let me tell you something is really lost in watching baseball when it's like 45 degrees and windy out.  Brrrrrr.

Cheering -  For the 24 Hour Readathon.  I totally missed the under-publicized deadline for signing up to cheer, but that didn't stop me, I went "rogue" instead and had a great time cheering for the ridiculous amount of people that were signed up this time around.  However, having missed the official deadline, it kind of sucked because I had to go back to using the sign-up linky to find blogs to cheer for, and lots of people signed up and didn't participate or participated by Tumblr.  Is there a way to cheer for Tumblr users?  I mean, I'm pretty clueless about Tumblr, so maybe there is a simple way, but I couldn't find it and, unfortunately, couldn't cheer for those folks.  However, I did make up a great rhyme or two to cheer Readathonners on Twitter, and seriously, I had a ton of fun.  Thanks to Andi and Heather for not just keeping the event going but working to make it even better every time!

Crying -  Over Patchy.  One of our "stray" cat colony that is never quite stray enough.  Almost exactly a year after his brother went missing, Patchy got hit by a car.  You never quite feel like you did enough to help the cats you didn't mean to pseudo-own, but you can't figure out how you could have done more under the circumstances and the whole thing ends up in a morass of a sadness and mostly undeserved guilt.  The moral of the story?  Save another animal lover some heartbreak.  Adopt a cat, and get it fixed so it won't make lots of other (homeless) cats that some poor sucker won't want to watch starve and will feed and love and be heartbroken over when they can't take it in because they already have a zillion cats and the inevitable occurs.  :'-(

Celebrating -  It's birthday season for my family.  April is littered with birthdays here on the ranch.  My mom, dad, and two aunts all celebrate this month.  It's a month full of cake and cards stuffed with cash which is fun but hard on the ever-fattening recent desk job convert and those with ailing bank accounts. 

Planning -  To start blogging again.  For real.  But here's the thing, I've decided not to let myself start until I have a good stockpile of posts to schedule out.  I'm shooting for eight.  Counting this one, I have about three whole and four halves done.  Wish me luck - I do miss this blogging thing!

That's what I've been doing.  What have you been up to?