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!

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Today it's time to celebrate a few things that I rarely do!  One is blogging!  Look at me, blogging like a blogger.  My life has been throwing up one hurdle after another ever since last summer, so by the time I get home from work the only thing that my ruined brain will tolerate is the binge watching of Netflix with occasional breaks for reading books when I manage to feel guilty enough to turn off the TV.  The other thing I rarely do is go to a book group.  The book group is great, enlightening and engaging.  I, however, read terribly slowly especially when it comes to books I "should" be reading and books that are challenging.  Book group books are often both.  That and my practiced disinterest in most of the classics tends to keep me from being a regular attender.

My own failings aside, I read this month's book group read and attended the conversation last night.  This month's selection was Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, a book that certainly benefited from discussion.

Gilead is Robinson's Pulitzer winning depiction of the Reverend John Ames, who, in his mid-70s, has been diagnosed with angina pectoris and expects that he will soon reach the end of his mortal life.  Ames, lifelong pastor of a congregationalist church in Gilead, Iowa, has a much younger wife and a young son.  Gilead takes the form of his writing to his adult son who will grow up without his father.  What emerges is a quiet reflection on life, faith, and forgiveness that reflects Ames' joy in a life lived and his hope for his son's future.

Admittedly, I struggled a bit with Gilead.  Had I not been striving to finish it to achieve my sporadic attendance at book group, I likely would have laid it aside.  The book, though profound in wisdom and beautifully written, is thoroughly a character study and suffers for the lack of a driving plot.  The tangential nature of the old man's thoughts migrates from topic to topic so that when I arrived at a break, it was easy to put down and not so easy to pick back up.

That said, there were several things I appreciated about Gilead.  For one, it is a positive portrayal of Christians in fiction without the cheesy bent of books actually labeled Christian fiction.  This is, unfortunately, startlingly rare.  Gilead is permeated with Ames' joy in the trappings of Christianity.  Instead of depicting a man caught up in his own righteousness, Gilead offers a portrait of a man who knows his own weakness and is ever struggling against it.  This isn't the judging, hypocritical Christian of stereotype but a realistic picture of both the pain and joy of earthly religion.

Secondly, I was very impressed with Robinson's reverend's thoughts on the Bible and on an assortment of Christian precepts.  In his writings, Ames considers the ten commandments, the nature of grace, the difficulty and necessity of forgiveness, and God's providence.  Ames is awed by the ordinary miracles of God's creation and feels the significance of preaching and blessing and baptizing God's chosen.  Robinson renders his reflection on his life and his hopes for his son's future with tenderness, wisdom, and poetry that make this book linger in the mind after the last page is turned.

Gilead is one of those books that has grown on me since finishing it, and after the book discussion I appreciate it still more.  Christians will like this book for its fresh perspective on the things of God and for the familiarity of a Christian life.  Non-Christians stand to appreciate a portrait of a "real deal" Christian that makes Christianity a bit more human and accessible without ever dumbing down its significance. 

"She has watched every moment of your life, almost, and she loves you as God does, to the marrow of your bones.  So that is the honoring of the child.  You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone.  Your existence is a delight to us."

 (No disclaimer required.  This one's from my very own personal library.)

The Uninvited by Cat Winters

It took reading this whole book, putting it down for a week, and then picking it back up today to write this review for it to occur to me that every time I look at the cover I get a certain Alanis Morissette tune in my head, Uninvited.  Ah, I am so self-aware.  The moral of the story is that I think I have to review this book immediately or face the possibility of never getting this song out of my head despite it having nothing much to do with the book other than the title in common.

The Uninvited starts off with a bang when twenty-five year old Ivy Rowan, who has always seen ghosts when someone close to her is about to die, finally gives up her reclusive life on her family's farm and moves into the town of Buchanan.  On that night in 1918 as World War I rages, fueled by booze, paranoia, and grief Ivy's father and younger brother beat a German furniture store owner to death.  Finally realizing that there's nothing she can do to protect her family from her volatile father, Ivy determines finally to leave home to start a new life. 

In a chain of events that is nothing if not surreal, newly liberated Ivy takes a room with the war widow of the most popular guy in her high school class, assists two young women desperately if inexpertly driving an ambulance around the poorer side of town where influenza victims are dying by the dozen, and is lured by jazz music to a dance at the Masonic Lodge - a dance that seems to know no race or prejudice.  In the meantime, she is riddled with guilt over her father and brother's dreadful deed and comes to know and love the surviving brother of the man they killed.  As Ivy drifts through her new life with a sleepless fanaticism, making new friends, connecting with old ones, and trying her best to atone for her family's failings, she begins to see the ghosts of the people she knows to be dead and fears the worst for her mother and her newfound lover.  It's not long until Ivy's journey of self-discovery takes an unexpected turn, and everything she knows about herself and her new life is called into question.

It took a little while for me to settle into the reading of The Uninvited.  Being dropped into a life on the cusp of change and one that is changing so radically is hard to catch up with.  Ivy's new life is rendered in such a way that it seems almost dreamlike, with chance encounters and forbidden loves that spin her in a radically different direction than what she has ever known.  With an odd combination of jazz music, World War I generated paranoia, and the plague of influenza, Winters makes a vivid setting of downtown Buchanan.  The fear and frenzy there is palpable and contributes to the unsettled feeling of the narrative.

Ivy herself is lovable character, a young woman who waited too long to discover herself.  I was both amazed and appalled by the journey her guilt led her on.  Winters does a perfect job of rendering Ivy's new life in a way that is satisfying but feels, deliberately, just the slightest bit off so that when the unexpected occurs, all the pieces are ready to fall into place.   

I'll be honest, I was expecting more ghosts and less coming of age, but I still liked what this book delivered, which is a great historical coming of age story with a twist that makes it hard to put down.  In The Uninvited, Cat Winters has written a ghost story that is less about death and more about learning to live.

(Thanks to the publisher for providing my copy in exchange for review consideration.)

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?

#AMonthofFaves : 10 Books That Made My Year

2015 has nearly drawn to a close, and it's been a rough one life-wise, but reading-wise it was certainly rewarding.  I think what's funny about my favorites this year is that so few other people seem to have read them, at least the ones that were published this year.  When I read great books published in the current year, it seems like they're never the same ones that everyone else is reading!  On a positive note, though, that gives me a chance to tell you about a few great books that maybe you haven't heard about from everyone and their mother......right? 

Anyhow, here is the top of the crop from my year of reading (in conjunction with a #AMonthofFaves).

 1. In a World Just Right by Jen Brooks - This book gets awarded the "Ugly Cry of the Year" award.  At first it's a strange little romance about a plane-crash survivor that can create worlds with his mind.  In one, his dream girl is his girlfriend, but what happens when the worlds start to meld together?  I never even saw it coming.

2. The Marauders by Tom Cooper - This one gets the "Surprise Hit" award.  When it first arrived, I thought I'd made a severe ARC requesting misstep.  However, this story of the hard luck people in a Louisiana bayou town turned out to be a hit for me because I've never been made to feel more sympathy for a bunch of less likeable characters, and I've never been so surprised at a book packing an unexpected emotional punch.

3. When She Woke by Hilary Jordan - I actually hate when I read a really great book at the beginning of the year because I know when it comes time to make this list, I'll nearly always forget to put it on the list because it seems like I read it an eon ago.  I loved Jordan's dystopian world where Christian fundamentalists dominate and dyeing people the colors indicative of their crimes has replaced imprisoning them.  Very believable world-building, very interesting retelling of The Scarlet Letter.

4. The Happy Christian by David Murray - Look!  It's a non-fiction title on my best of list, and it's not a memoir or even narrative non-fiction.  Be amazed!  This was a great read from last winter/spring full of practical ways to let God's promises make us more happy on a daily basis.  An ill-fit for my blog audience, perhaps, but a great fit for me as a human.

5. The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory by Stacy Wakefield - I fell in love with Sid, the narrator of this book, who is a girl caught up in the "romantic" idea of getting involved in the New York City squatter scene, which doesn't quite turn out like she expects.  The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory is a perfect slice of life book that follows Sid in her highs and lows with a little friendship and a little romance, nights when everything is perfect and others when everything goes wrong, but there's always a chance for a little happily ever after. 

6. Girl Underwater by Claire Kells - This one seems to have flown under the radar a bit, so all the more disappointed am I in myself for not having reviewed it.  It's the story of girl and the guy that dared to tell her to be true to herself, their survival of a plane crash and the long wait for rescue (with three young, newly orphaned boys in tow), and the aftermath. I loved Avery and Colin and their reluctant love story that emerges from tragedy.

7. Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum - I never fail to be captivated by stories set in World War II Germany, and this one didn't disappoint.  Those Who Save Us captures the moral ambiguities of surviving the war when a German woman, whose daughter is the product of her forbidden love affair with a Jew who has been taken away to a concentration camp, has an affair with a German officer to survive and to continue in the dangerous pursuit of supplying extra bread to the prisoners of the camp where her true lover is imprisoned.  

8. The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma - How to describe this book?  Eerie.  One ballerina in prison, one ballerina performing her final dance before she heads to Julliard, a prison haunted by a tragic event, guilt, innocence, and lots of lies.  I won't spoil it by writing more words.  It's way too good to be spoiled. 

9. The Visitors by Sally Beauman - I was a little daunted by The Visitors when I started reading it, lots of pages, small print, but I was totally captivated by this story of 1920s Egypt where the the last of the undiscovered tombs are being excavated in the Valley of Kings.  The narrator is a young girl who proves the perfect observer to the astonishing chain of events when Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered King Tut's tomb.  Beauman's story is the perfect blend of reality and fiction that left me feeling like I'd learned something and enjoyed every bit of it.

10. The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson - I wrapped up my reading year with this one, and it was a fantastic choice.  After a slow start, I was totally engaged in this story of a princess turned queen, chosen by God for some feat of service.  I loved the narrator, Elisa, a young, pudgy princess who feels ill-suited to her role as queen and for whatever service may be required of her.  Watching her come into her own amid desperate times made this book positively unputdownable.

Which books have been the highlights of your reading year?