I think I have too many things to do.

As is too often the case I have one again neglected to post anything here for quite some time. Fail. The past few months have felt just insanely busy. Tis the season!

First and foremost work really really gets in the way of all of the things I really want to do. And to make matters worse my work doesn't stop at 40 hours a week. Every time we have a concert or special event there goes any "free time". The spring is definitely the worst. And just looking at the calendar May is the most ridiculous month. Between April 30 and May 25 the only non-work day is the 12th. Ouch. Although I do plan on taking a few other days off. Now if I could just get someone to do my job when I'm not in the office things would be rather more dandy.

So it whatever time is left to me I have all of the following things to do:

• House work: The cat is not pulling his weight around the house and I have to do it all. The little jerk.
• Yard work:  I think I had to start mowing a full month earlier with the weather so warm. And I've expanded my veggie garden. Here's hoping I keep more than just cucumbers alive this time.
• Friends: After years of being largely, but not entirely, anti-social it seems that I've recently managed to re-connect much more with some old friends. And I've even found new ones - whoa.
• Band: The music is kinda bad all too often, but I could never give up playing so i'm glad for the outlet.
• Video games: Bran got me hooked on World of Warcraft and now he's dragging me into Diablo as well. I try not to admit it but they can be fun. I just wish they took less time and or I could knit and play!
• Biking: Exercise is healthy and can even be fun, I should do more of it.
• Photography: My photos really are getting better I think. But as with all learning/improvement more time is always a sure way to better results.
• Reading: I really don't know how I did it but as a youth I would fly through books sometimes to the tune of multiple books in a week. I've been doing a bit more lately but sometimes it feels like I'm just slogging through them. And the library deadlines come up so quickly!
• Knitting/Crochet: Aside from the perpetual desire to be working on dozens of projects of my own I even have the opportunity right now to work on growing a bit of my own crafty business. Maybe I should learn lever knitting or whatever the supposed current fastest knitting method may be.
• Spinning: I am totally getting better at spinning. Latest discover is an awesome DKish single. Knit up so wonderfully.
• Other Crafts: My awesome sewing machine is practically begging me to use it more often. And wouldn't it be wonderful to work at sketching/doodling/zentangling. Oh and what about the sweatshirt that I've wanted to paint for myself for over a year.
• Relax: Eh, overrated!

July Results

Here’s what I accomplished in July:

TdF – I pretty much rocked the first ¾ of Le Tour. But alas when it got down to the wire (last 3 days) I was too distracted with camping prep and actually camping to finish my goal. Alas I really barely even started the last part. But the endeavor really was quite a success as I did in fact finish 2 UFO’s, over ½ complete a Christmas yarn, and learn to spin awesome laceweight.

5 afghan squares – Actually the last one was finished on August 1st, but eh close enough for me. I really need to spread out these suckers and take a photo. There’s a lot of them really.

WoT book 7 – Hooray for past half way! This month was particularly good because I had like no reading time during the TdF so I ended up saving most all of the book (600+ pages) for camping. Then I spent glorious hours just sitting and reading and being fully immersed the fantasy world. I’ve not had the opportunity to do that with a book in quite a while. Really I ought to get back to it methinks.

April Recap.

So it feels rather like April pretty much kicked my butt. I really don't know what happened....

Home time: I went back to my parents house first for Easter and then later to visit my Grandfather (he's on hospice now).  As much as I like going back to see my family and enjoy spending time with them it always feels like I accomplish nothing from those days. That said I wouldn't trade them back just to get things done. Umm...yea I don't think there is a way to properly express this. Oh well.

Boy time: Bran and I spent a lot of my free hours together. This is also 100% a good thing as our relationship is just getting stronger and stronger and more and more awesome. But seriously he doesn't even let me knit when we're watching movies or TV. No worries though someday I'll overrule him :-)

Crafts: Towards the beginning of the month I do believe I was thinking spinning. I made that little batch of yarn. But then I was distracted by other things. On the square front I only managed to whip up 3 crochet and 1 knit square. With everything going on I've just not had my normal free time. Goodness.

Reading: The Shadow Rising, this months WoT book was just shy of 1000 pages. I hit the middle of the month and realized I was only like 1/3 of the way through. But in this last week I dug down deep and finished it last evening before midnight even :-)

Biking: I do believe that I hit just over 100 miles in April. Better than March, but less good than it should be. Must improve in May.

Video Games: Bran has me addicted to games now dammit. I bet I lost a oodles and oodles of time to the DS. Plus he was trying to get me into a new game. And now in the last few days I am getting into the new game. Uh-oh.

So all in all, aside from work and my regularly scheduled events, ballet and band, I do believe those things can account for pretty much my entire month....hmm...that seems kinda pathetic.

March Progress

March definitely came in like a Lion for me. And while it's calmed down some, I really don't see many lambs in my future.

The stress is entirely work related. This is always the busiest time of the year and there were a few compounding issues thrown into the works this time around. And so I’ve been feeling pretty stretched since late-February-ish. Then pretty much from right around when March started it’s been like running full throttle into a brick wall. Over, and over, and over again. Can you tell from all of my amazing metaphors (and I could easily think of dozens more) that things really are not very happy for me there? Yes? Good.

Thank goodness that my personal life is actually for real happy, or I would be completely doomed. Reason #1 for this is the continued awesomeness that is my Man. We hit six months on the 11th. Yay for us. I’ve also been happily crafting, reading, managing to ride my bike at least a bit, and I’m a bit loath to say where the Man can see it but I’ve even been video-gaming it some as of late. These things make me happy. Although even some of the happy things have been a bit stifled owing to exhaustion and what not. Boo.

But let’s take a closer look at my specific March goals:

• WoT Reading: An easy easy check. I finished book 2 early in the month and as I only have 170ish pages left in book 3 I may actually be back on track with my book a month plan.
• Bike 100 miles: Uh-oh. Right now I’ve only logged 35 miles. And I have absolutely no excuse as the weather has been incredibly gorgeous. It’s just so hard to get motivated when I can collapse on the couch and read or do a craft. Or if I want to enjoy the weather I can go read outside. Technically I still have 10 days which is quite enough for lots of miles. But I don’t see it happening. Maybe I should modify and try for 50?
• Blocks of the month: Double-ish check. I finished the planned 4 squares. Then at some point I calculated how large the afghans would be and decided I ought to be doing 3 of each (6 total) blocks each month. Last night I started to question that so who knows what I’ll really do. But so far this month I have completed 2 crochet squares and 3 knit squares plus have 1 crochet block started.
• Art Journal: I started 1 page and didn’t finish anything. New things are totally not my strong point. Must kick self into action.
• Wall-decal: 2 weekends ago when I was actually not working I found that I can easily freehand a dandelion seed. I was very proud of myself and promptly cut and ‘hung’ one lonely seed which floated their alone for a time. Then yesterday I was re-inspired and drew up a bunch, cut out 4 and proceeded to attempt the stem. It’s much too big and heavy now, but it’s still good progress and quite awesome.
• Blog comments: So far I’m slacking. It just feels so weird. And is exasperated by my own lack of bloggage recently. But I should be able to do it now that I am posting again.
• Postcards: I was going to do something for St. Patty’s day. And even started/tried something new. But the new thing wasn’t so cool and I never kept going. But if I do something relatively simple, maybe design something printable, the goal could still be easily met.
• Organize craft stuff: Check! I did this 2 weekends ago. It was awesome. I took many pictures with the intent of blogging about it.
• Cook: Kinda doing ok at this maybe? Early in the month I made Chicken and Biscuits which is kind of cheating because everything, the meat veggies and starch, are all in the one dish. Last week I had two good dinners of ham steak and pierogies with peppers. The peppers thing was an unknown but it worked out happily.

Well I do still have some work to do. But seems like I stand a chance at being moderately successful. Rock on!

March Goals

Goal setting has never been one of my strong points. If it's something I can do right away I'm perfectly good at that. Frequently when I have free weekends I'll make giant task lists and typically do pretty well at accomplishing them. But the farther I get from the goal-set date the less likely it is that I will complete the task.

But I'm feeling motivated today. This is partially owing to the fact that I have totally been banging out craft projects recently. So I'm going to try for some March goals. And I'll try hard not to be too overly ambitious.

• Finish reading WoT book 2. I should have been able to accomplish this in February but the olympics distracted me. Now I'm going to have to work a bit to make it back up to getting through a book a month.
• Ride 100 miles on bike. This is pretty ambitious and will be entirely weather based. Right now the sun sets around 6 and we only occastionally make it into the 40's. But I'm hoping that by the end of the month I'll be able to push out a few 1 or 2 hour rides with temps in the 40's and if i'm really lucky 50's. Fingers crossed.
• 4 squares. 2 crochet, 2 knit for my 'block a month' afghans. I really ought to like space these suckers out over the month to keep my yarn-crafting itch satiated while working on other things through the month.
• Make at least 4 art journal pages. Maybe even get watercolors to play with.
• Dandelion wall-decal for bedroom. I have wanted to do this for a long time.
• Leave at least 10 blog comments for others. I am a total lurker, but must break out of this habit.
• Send another batch of postcards to friends and family.
• Organize all craft stuff. I have so much stuff and a good bit of it is randomly stored. Organization (or as close as can be) will be awesome.
• Make at least 2 real home-cooked meals (meat, veggies, and starch) from scratch. I've been failing on the feeding-self-well thing recently. But I don't want to do more than 2 because frequently such things feed me for a full week.

 

It would be way to easy to keep thinking of more things but I really must contain myself. It's a good list. A few things may be a challenge (biking), but with some persistence and drive ought to be do-able.

I'm thinking I ought to do weekly reports. Breaking things down into smaller pieces is always helpful to success.

It was a beginning.

I started re-reading the first of the Wheel of Time Books: The Eye of the World.

The first night I think I must have been quite tired. Such as I really have no idea why I thought it appropriate to read before bed, but nevertheless I did and only got through the prologue. It was not all bad however as the prologue is pretty awesome and made me a bit excited for when things start really rolling later in the series.

On another night I picked it up and only got about 20 pages in or so. I’m thinking my recent yarn craft obsession is really cutting into my reading.

But then finally on Sunday I had a mostly all free day. So after accomplishing much crafting in the afternoon I devoted a few hours of the evening to my book.

Closing the book I was over 100 pages in and quite proud of myself. Until I realized that I am reading a ridiculously large book/series and so still have at least 600 pages of The Eye of the World to go.

I have a feeling this series re-read may be a love/hate task.

"The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long pass, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning."

is reading better than tv

The other day I read an online article titled “Watching TV shortens life span, study finds”. Now the idea that watching television is a (relatively) unhealthy activity is nothing at all new. But it got me thinking…what about all of the other sedentary activities found in our lives.

Most specifically I wondered about reading. When reading one is distinctly physically non-active. And yet this activity has absolutely none of the stigma that television does. Perhaps because too many people don’t do it? Or it’s quite likely that there are other correlations that exist between the variables. For example: reading is considered to be a higher level thinking type activity and better educated people are typically healthier.

I wonder as to which activity has taken up more time in my life? For most people I’m sure the answer is TV. But luckily for me I am highly abnormal. As a child my parents would only allow us to watch a very limited amount of TV. And as a child I was a ridiculously voracious reader. These days I’m sure that my tube viewing hours dominate by far. I like to try and justify this as also being in correlation with my craft time (unless I am absolutely exhausted or hanging out with the boy I never watch TV without a craft or sometimes a meal). But just knowing how much I read when I still had those empty hours (before high school) I really have no idea which activity would win out.

Moral of the story: I really ought to be more physically active but I'm really not too concerned about it.

Reading into the future.

I fell off the bandwagon for quite a while again. Oops.

So without further ado back into the randomness that is my brain:

In 2009 I decided that I wanted to read at least 1 book a week. For a while it was really easy. Then it got more difficult. I latched onto a boyfriend and gee-wiz all of my free time was gone.

But I still did it. Mostly because I got ahead of schedule early on and cheated by counting audio books (it's a very different experience but my primary goal was to acquire the knowledge of a story so it didn't matter through what means to me).

Currently I stand at 53 books. I anticipate finishing 2 more before the end of the year. Yay me.

But now as I stand on the cusp of the year looking into 2010 I'm having difficulties deciding what to read. For a normal person this would seem a very strange thing. But I am odd and here's my situation:

In November a new book was published that I have been waiting for years for. It's the first part of the last book of the Wheel of Time series. The whole story of the series is a long one so to try and be concise: Really long books, really long series, author died a few years ago (when I heard the news I actually yelled "no!" in desperation), series being completed by someone else.

I was thinking I would re-read the books before consuming the new awesomeness. However it's a huge undertaking: think over 10,000 pages. So that's why I didn't include it in the 2009 book a week deal (even I know 800 pages in a week is a bit much).

So in the meantime I've gotten very good about finding books that look interesting and adding them to my "to read" list on the website Goodreads. And well if I read through all of the Wheel of Time I don't get to read the other new stuff. As a general rule I don't re-read (or re-watch etc.). I always go for something new.

This is quite the conundrum. I'm thinking maybe I'll alternate. One WoT, one new book. I kinda doubt that I'll make it to the new book in a year (especially since the boy is still in the picture and well I kinda have a life - weird), but one can't have everything.

Plus it's entirely possible that if I'm too slow the next book (part 2 of "book 12" the final book) will be out. Or if I'm really really slow the 'final' (I kinda almost don't believe them) book will be released.

Choices...choices...

The sweet, gracious discourses.

Way back when this year started I believe I was feeling a bit at odds. I do believe I must have had way too much free time back then because for whatever reason I decided it would be a good idea to read at least a book a week for 2009.

For a time this was easy. But by mid-spring things were rather busy and it was becoming difficult. I have allowed myself a bit of cheating by counting any audio books that I consume. Realistically they take significantly longer to get through the book, but I can get in ‘reading’ hours while driving or when I’ve not finished the book after the drive I’ll listen and do crafts.


This is the 30th week of 2009. I’ve more or less been tracking what I read through www.goodreads.com but it’s been a while since I actually calculated how I was doing. And so here is an exhaustive, hopefully, list of books which I have consumed:

Across the Nightingale Floor - Hearn, Lian
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Haddon, Mark
Children of Dune - Herbert, Frank
Dancing On My Grave - Kirkland, Gelsey
The Kite Runner - Hosseini, Khaled
Holding on to the air: An Autobiography - Farrell, Suzanne
Shaman’s Crossing - Hobb, Robin
The Friday Night Knitting Club - Jacobs, Kate
All the King’s Men - Warren, Robert Penn
My Sister’s Keeper - Picoult Jodi
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia - Gilbert, Elizabeth
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - See, Lisa
Animal Farm - Orwell, George
Brisingr - Paolini, Christopher
Anansi Boys - Gaiman, Neil
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Hosseini, Khaled
Artemis Fowl - Colfer, Eoin
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident - Colfer, Eoin
The Children of Hurin - Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Secret Life Of CeeCee Wilkes - Chamberlain, Diane
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code - Colfer, Eoin
Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien, J.R.R.
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception - Colfer, Eoin
Invisible Man - Ellison, Ralph
The Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien, J.R.R.
Dragonflight - McCaffrey, Anne
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony - Colfer, Eoin
God Emperor of Dune - Herbert, Frank
Dragonquest - McCaffrey, Anne
New Spring - Jordan, Robert
The World According to Garp - Irving, John
The History of Love - Krauss, Nicole
Odd Hours - Koontz, Dean
The White Dragon - McCaffrey, Anne

And the grand total is: 34!

Yay I’m actually a bit ahead.

“Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.”