Summer Days, Drifting Away

T-minus two weeks until school starts! There are two reviews on deck in the near future (Freakonomics and The Tipping Point) but in the meantime, a few random updates:

• A is cutting her third tooth of the summer and the fourth is not far behind. These include her lower molars. It has not been a great time.
• Also not a great time: A has decided she hates when I change her diaper and will not lay down for me. I've tried nearly every suggestion I've come across, including introducing the potty, but nothing has worked. The alligator wrestling is getting old. 
• Our house is currently cleaner than it's been since before I got pregnant. Yay! This is because we're dealing a fruit fly infestation. Not yay. Not yay at all.
• The job search hasn't been going well. I seem to be limited by my lack of Masters in Education and my lack of counselling experience. It's discouraging and makes me think it's easier to just stay in teaching.
• Speaking of which, a full-time teaching job came up for the fall semester that I think I have a reasonable shot of getting. After some initial panic, I had an epiphany of sorts and am actually really hoping to get this. I'll write more on this in the near future. 

I think that covers the main goings-on around these parts. Stay tuned for some reviews (and hopefully employment news) soon!

Settling Down Again

March really got away from me, didn't it? It was a busy month but things have settled down now that Easter is done. Over the next little while, I'll be catching up here. My review of The Bean Trees is coming soon and I'm nearly done the audio version of Kitchen Confidential.

For now, I'll leave you with this Vanity Fair piece on Virgin Galactic. It's an appropriate follow-up to Rocketeers and provides some extra information that Belfiore didn't include in the book. The VF article is optimistic about Virgin Galactic finally getting SpaceShipTwo underway in the next year or so. I wish I could say the same!

Getting It Together

This year, I didn't bother making any new year's resolutions. They rarely get kept anyway! Instead, I went with Alyssa's idea over at Apple Pie and the Universe and chose a theme. Between pregnancy and a newborn, then a not-so-newborn who wouldn't sleep, last year was chaos. Now that things have settled down, I've decided that 2015 is going to be the year of Getting My Shit Together.

One month in, I'm making some decent progress. We've figured out some much needed new routines and are doing fairly well with sticking to them. I've caught up with a couple of friends and am planning to continue making that a priority. I'm also working on getting the house in order, which is the big thing I'd really hoped to accomplish before returning to work.

While browsing Pinterest last fall, I discovered the 40 Weeks 1 Whole House challenge and have been using that as a guide. Week 1 involves sorting through all "kitchen papers" and creating a system to contain and manage it. That took me all of January since I had, no kidding, two years' worth of crap piled up! Week 2 is about setting up a family calendar, which we already have so that one's a breeze. I'm now embarking on Week 3: organizing lunches. The meal planning aspect will be simple, I've been doing that for years. The major task here will be reorganizing our kitchen cart, where we keep containers and other supplies, to make it more functional.

Aside from the 40 Weeks challenge, my goal for this month is to deal with work-related stuff that I've been blissfully ignoring since maternity leave began. That ends in May, but I'd like to extend through the rest of the school year and start looking for non-teaching job. I also need to update my resume and portfolio, and maybe, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I might even clean out my work emails.

So, when I'm not reading or hanging out with Baby A, this is what I'm up to these days!

Happy New Year!

Another year, already! Holy smokes, does the time fly when you're not looking. 

One of my goals for 2015 is to revive and refocus this blog. I'm hoping to be able to keep up with posting at least once a week. There's so much to tell you about and I'm looking forward to catching up! 

For now, I'll leave you with the best thing about 2014:

Sugar is Evil

Worst. Blogger. Ever. I know. I'm sorry.

There are so many things to update about and I will try to do that on a somewhat regular basis while I still can. There are less than 100 days left before baby gets here; how the heck did that happen?! For the time being, I figure the best way to get back in the habit is to just dive right in because if I keep waiting for the right time, it'll never come.

This week will be 27 weeks. We found out over the Christmas break that we are having a baby girl and while this scares the pants off us (have you talked to any teenage girls recently?), we are so excited to meet her! Her name is still undecided, though we've narrowed it down to two choices. I have pictures to show but they will have to come in a future update since my laptop crashed a couple of weeks ago and they are not handy at the moment.

Today, I went in for the glucose tolerance test. The drink itself was surprisingly decent; it tasted like flat Orange Crush. I didn't feel the greatest during the hour I had to sit there waiting, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Unfortunately, you can't consume 50 grams of glucose in a 5 minute period without some kind of crash and it is hitting as we speak. Here's hoping I passed because I really don't want to have to do this again over a 3 hour period!

As far as the books go, reading has slowed waaaaay down with pregnancy. I don't have the energy or attention span to keep up the way I used to. It's nearly March and I'm still working on book #2 for this year. Very unusual for me! I got way behind on reviews last year but I'm hoping to at least summarize or list the rest of the books from 2013 at some point. In case you are wondering, this year kicked off with When You Reach Me (a great YA novel that was pretty light and easy, a perfect fit for me right now) and I'm currently slogging through Under the Dome. I've got about 100 pages left and I can't say I enjoyed it that much, despite devoting two and a half months to it.

The plan is to update again Wednesday or Thursday of this week. See you then, if you're still here!

Back at it

Oh. Hi there. You're still here? Thanks for sticking around. If you're wondering where I've been for the last month and a half...

First, I was doing a lot of this:

Once that was over, I started a summer online course so I was doing a lot of this:

And last week, I finally got to start enjoying the summer break properly. Hubby and I were away doing a lot of this:

This is the Carnival Liberty at Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. It was glorious.

We're back home now and  I've got three more weeks of freedom to enjoy before the school year starts up again. I've got a lot to write about over the next little while: I'm way behind on book reviews, I actually have some fitness updates since I did manage to squeeze in some progress on that front this summer, and TTC Friday will continue as we prepare to see the REI specialist next week. So, stick with me a little longer and we'll get this show back on the road!

Good Things Thursday & Friday

My four day weekend has begun and I've already gotten lazy!

Thursday's good things:

• Music that made me smile. I heard Red Red Wine on the radio while driving to work. Back when I was thirteen, that song was my definition of sexy. Totally my jam.
• A mostly cooperative grade nine class.
• A beautifully done, moving presentation of the Stations of the Cross during our Holy Thursday liturgy (I teach at a Catholic school). Our school was without a drama teacher for the first month of the semester and the person who ended up volunteering to take over has done a fantastic job. 
• Getting the grocery shopping done without getting stressed. The store was packed, as it always is when a holiday weekend is approaching, but I didn't let it get to me.
• Pomegranate margaritas!

Today's good things:

• Sleeping in
• Spending most of the day on the couch. I will probably regret this, though, since I didn't get any school work done at all.
• Finished DH's taxes. Both of ours are now done, just have to verify the numbers and send them off.
• Blueberry-banana pancakes with strawberry sauce for dinner.
• Knowing that I have three more days off.

That brings me to the end of my Good Things project. Has it made a difference? Yes. Nothing Earth-shattering but I think it has been helpful. For many of the positives I listed throughout the week, I could have listed just as many negatives. There were things that were stressful and frustrating but making this list every day helped to shift my focus away from those things. I didn't end up dwelling on them and that made them easier to deal with. I also noticed that I have a tendency to expect the worst, which gives me something I can work on. Ultimately, I needed a change of perspective and got it so I'd say the idea paid off.

Good Things Wednesday

A successful Lock Down drill this morning. Last time I had to do one of those, a kid popped a balloon in the middle of it. Not good! This was much better.

The junior boys' hockey team had a tournament at the arena next door so after our lesson in the grade ten class, they went to watch hockey and I got a break.

Also thanks to the tournament, the most disruptive kids in my grade nine class were all absent (they're on the team). It was the most mellow and productive class we've had yet.

Time to eat my lunch two days in a row!

Time to do everything I needed to in my split class. For once, I didn't feel like a chicken with my head cut off. They're still a month behind where they should be but it's starting to feel salvageable.

Shiny new hair dryer! Looking forward to trying it out tonight.

The Daily Show and Colbert are back on this week and I finally had time after work today to start catching up.

Just one more day to go until a four day weekend.

Good Things Tuesday

My travel hair dryer. My normal dryer blew out on Sunday while I was only halfway through drying my hair. I thought I'd have to make an emergency shopping trip after work on Monday but then remembered that I have a travel one lying around. My bangs look like crap but it saved me some time.

My awesome grade ten class. They make me like what I do. It's the one class I look forward to every day and those kids give me the least grief. If it wasn't for them, this semester would be miserable.

Actually having time to eat my lunch today.

Parent interviews went more smoothly than expected. The one parent I was particularly nervous about, because she kind of laid into me a year and a half ago when I taught another one of her sons, didn't even remember meeting me before. She was lovely.

It was still light out when I drove home after 7:30.

I don't have too much planning to do tonight. It was hard enough to stay awake at 9 AM today, even harder now!

The email I got today with the subject line, "Your cruise countdown begins today!" We've got summer vacation plans (booked last week) and I can't wait!

Good Things Monday

DH and I have been catching up on Mad Men and in one of the last episodes of season 4, Peggy reminds Don of one of his advertising philosophies: if you don't like what people are saying about you, change the conversation. That resonated with me. It's time to change MY conversation. I need to refocus my thinking and my energy into positive things. I need to start being proactive about the things I'm unhappy with that I can change.

To that end, I decided to try a little experiment on the blog this week. Every day, I'm going to list at least five good things that have happened. My hope is that by the end of the week, I'll be paying more attention to those than to all the other junk that is going on that just drags me down. And maybe it'll motivate me to keep seeking out positive change.

So, good things that happpened today:

1. No surprise on-call during my prep, allowing me to finish what I needed to before I had to start teaching. I try not to leave much work that needs to be done for the same day's classes, just in case, but I really needed that time today.
2. One of my most obstinate grade ten students assigned himself a new seat today, did more work and participated more than he has been all semester. Progress reports went home on Friday and it looks like he actually gives a damn, despite his attitude to the contrary all this time.
3. I survived my grade nine class.
4. I didn't have to stay too long after school. Tomorrow will be a late day; we have parent-teacher interviews from 3:30 to 7:30 so this made me happy.
5. Dinner was not what I originally planned but it turned out really good.

I found this while looking for a good image to go with this post and I think it's perfect:

Reality Bites

Back to reality this week! Sadly, March Break is over. This is progress report week at school so things are even more hectic than usual. I won`t be back to my regular blogging schedule until Friday, most likely.

A few random things:

• As usual, I didn`t accomplish the vast majority of what I`d hoped to during the break. Laziness and procrastination won out. Now I`m paying the price! I actually meant to start on the progress reports during the break and completely forgot about them until the weekend.
• Not pregnant. My luteal phase this past cycle was so weird, though, that I was convinced I was pregnant until 11dpo, when the test told me otherwise. Like clockwork, my temps dropped the next day and that was that.
• No ultrasound results yet. This is really bothering me because they said that it should only take two days to get the results back to my doctor`s office. That would have been last Friday. I called them yesterday after work and they had nothing.
• Work sucks. I`ll elaborate on this, and what I`m trying to do to make it not suck so much, in an upcoming blog.
• I`m currently reading Tinker Tailor Solider Spy and it is not going well. My brain is too tired to follow something that complex right now.

Until Friday...

March Break Retail Therapy

Happy March Break!

Things have stalled a bit as far as reading goes. I have about an hour left of Little Princes so I am hoping to get that reviewed by the end of this week. I'm also about 2/3 of the way through The Virgin Suicides. I was hoping to pick up the pace during the break but am finding that I'm just not in the mood.

Instead of reading, I've been working on getting some of my March Break goals accomplished. Mission #1: shopping! I spent yesterday with my mom, wandering the mall. I have a stockpile of Christmas gift cards to use so I tried to make a dent in them. It wasn't as successful as I'd hoped but I did end up with some good finds.

From Ricki's, this top...

I also wanted this one but the store didn't have my size. I'll be going to another location later this week, hopefully I can find it there:

 

We had some fun playing with the make-up at Sephora. I ended up with some $5 nail polish and a reminder that I'm not getting any younger:

Last but not least,  DH and I have been looking for a new car. The DH's car is 11 years old and it's been one issue after another for the last year or so. We've reached the point where it's easier to just replace it and last night, we did exactly that! Meet the latest addition to our household, a 2013 Chevy Equinox:

We'll be picking it up on Thursday evening.

Not a bad start to the break so far! Now, I have to motivate myself to get some work done both for school and around the house. I'd like to play in the kitchen a bit too. One week just isn't enough!

30 before 30

The countdown is on to March Break! Just 1.5 weeks to go. I can't wait. This semester continues to kick my ass.

My doctor's appointment went relatively well on Monday. There's some progress and a bit more frustration. I'll talk more about that on Friday. Today, let's talk lists. I love lists. And when it comes to reading, I keep many. There are lists I make of books that I'd like to read, and there are lists that I've found of books that I should read. I enjoy tracking my books and comparing them to those "best of" or "must read" lists.

Recently, I came across a list of the 30 books you should read before turning 30 (found via Miss Bibliophile). I turn 30 in three months so I was curious to see where I stood. Here's the list, with the books I've read bolded and books I own in blue:

30 Before 30

1. The Iliad and the Odyssey: Homer
2. The Secret History: Donna Tartt
3. Jesus’ Son: Denis Johnson
4. The Complete Stories: Flannery O’Connor
5. Much Ado about Nothing: William Shakespeare
6. The Sun Also Rises: Ernest Hemingway
7. The Road: Cormac McCarthy
8. Maus: Art Spiegelman
9. Ender’s Game: Orson Scott Card
10. Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen
11. Middlesex: Jeffrey Eugenides
12. Ghost World: Daniel Clowes
13. On the Road: Jack Kerouac
14. Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston
15. Cat’s Cradle: Kurt Vonnegut
16. Lolita: Vladimir Nabokov
17. The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien
18. 1984: George Orwell
19. The Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger
20. The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald
21. Beloved: Toni Morrison
22. Infinite Jest: David Foster Wallace
23. Lord of the Flies: William Golding
24. Don Quixote: Miguel de Cervantes
25. The Trial: Franz Kafka
26. To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf
27. Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury
28. Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison
29. To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee
30. Treasure Island: Robert Louis Stevenson

Read: 7

Yikes! Apparently, I'll be entering my 30s lacking a lot of literary enlightenment.

Another recent find is the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge (also via Miss Bibliophile). I love Gilmore Girls and it's mind-boggling to see just how many books were referenced during its seven season run. This challenge lists all of them. There are around 250 titles on the list. So far, I've read 56 of them. Or possibly 46. I lost count somewhere along the way!

Other lists I use:
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (64/1294*)
Modern Library Top 100 (11 from the Board list, 14 from the Reader list)
The Observer's 100 Best Novels of All Time (18)

*There have been two more editions of this list since it originally came out. The 1294 comes from combining all of the books that have appeared in all versions of the list.

Do you use lists to track your reading or to help you choose books?

Mid-Week Randomness

I have a review of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row in the works but don't have the brainpower to knock it out today. Initially, I was only teaching part time this semester but as of yesterday, I am back to full time. This would normally be good news but so far, it is kicking my ass.

One of my classes is a split, so there are two separate courses running together. This particular combination is not at all a good one but it is what it is and it's mine until June. The split class is last period and it is exhausting. I finish one lesson only to turn around and teach another to the other half of the class. Some days, there is overlap and that helps but most of the time, there isn't. Now that I have two other classes to teach before I even get to that one (I have prep in the morning then teach straight through the rest of the day), I am DONE when that final bell goes.

To tide you over, some random updates:

• I started listening to the audio version of Little Princes by Conor Grennan. So far, I love it. I had held off on it because I thought it would be too similar to Three Cups of Tea, which I liked a lot. This may end up being even better.
• I also started reading Alice Munro's collection, Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You. She's one of my favourite writers but I'm not feeling this one yet.
• I did not get around to yoga last week. The plan was to do it over the weekend but I found out on Friday that I was getting those two new classes and spent the weekend planning...also being a bit lazy since it was a long weekend. I'm hoping to work it in this week.
• Still haven't ovulated, though I think I did get an actual positive OPK two days ago. WTF, body?!

I'll leave you with my weekday anthem...

In Between

Reviews have slowed down for the time being since I'm still working on a couple of books. At the moment, I'm...

reading: One Day, by David Nicholl (about halfway through)
listening to: Bossypants, by Tina Fey (just started yesterday and really enjoying it)

In the meantime, I am planning a mini-review roundup of the books I read last year when the hubby and I started TTC. That should go up on Friday so stick around! In case you're curious, the books that will be discussed are:

The Mother of All Pregnancy Books (Canadian Edition), Ann Douglas
Taking Charge of Your Fertility, Toni Weschler
What to Expect Before You're Expecting, Heidi Murkoff
The Impatient Woman's Guide to Getting Pregnant, Jean Twenge

Who in the what, now?

The new year usually inspires me to start new things, or at least get a fresh start to things I may already be doing. I’m a little late to the party, but here we are. New year, new blog! The one thing that has remained constant in my life, through all of the new things and fresh starts, is my love of books and reading in general.  So what better subject for a new blog than books?

There are several new things that are happening in my life this year (see the header at the top of this page) and I’m sure those things will inform some of my reading choices. I hope to share some of those events here as we go. In the meantime, let's get to know each other a little bit.

I read mostly literary fiction but am not above chick lit if it’s good. I have a weakness for historical fiction and coming-of-age stories.  Last year, I also read a lot of books that were part of a series (Hunger Games, A Song of Ice and Fire, Outlander, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Southern Vampire Mysteries, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants).  

Here are my favourite books of 2012, in no particular order.

Riding Rockets, Mike Mullane
Mike Mullane is a member of NASA's astronaut class of '78. In Riding Rockets, he chronicles his time with the space shuttle program including training, the three shuttle missions he flew, and NASA office politics. He also discusses Challenger and Columbia, giving insights that were new to me. Mullane's sense of humor made the book incredibly entertaining. His descriptions felt real and the Challenger portion was heartbreaking.

 

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
The characters and the story make this series unique. I had a hard time putting it down until it was finished, then I couldn't wait to get my hands on the next two books. I didn't love the other two books as much as this first one but it's still great series.

In One Person, John Irving
Irving is one of my favourite authors and this is his latest novel. It captures everything I love about John Irving's books: memorable characters, stories that are quirky but still somehow believable, humour, and just good writing in general. This one is about Billy Dean and his coming of age in the '50s, when he begins to realize that he is bisexual. The novel follows him throughout his life as he tries to figure out, and come to terms with, his sexual idenity.

 

When the Nines Roll Over: And Other Stories, David Benioff
When it comes to short stories, I'm sort of picky. It's hard to beat Alice Munro but I have discovered a few other writers over the years that I like. David Benioff is one of them. The characters and stories in this collection drew me in, and the stories were thought-provoking. Some were intense. This is a very well written group of stories.

Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali 
Ali was born in Somalia and grew up in Kenya, in primarily Islamic communities. Infidel is her story about being a woman in an Islamic society and her struggle to reconcile her faith with the brutality that she witnesses as a direct result of that faith. Ultimately, Ali breaks with Islam and with her family, escaping to the Netherlands where she eventually becomes a member of parliament. Her story is interesting, thought-provoking, and inspiring. 

 
The Lincoln Lawyer, Michael Connolly
I read this book because the movie was coming out and the trailer looked really interesting. I'd never read anything by Connolly before and I was pleasantly surprised by how entertained I was. Mickey Haller is the title character. He's a criminal defense attorney with a quick wit and questionable ethics. I enjoyed the mystery and the courtroom theatrics. I plan on reading more from this series, and hope that they make another movie because Matthew McConaughey is perfectly cast.

Wild, Cheryl Strayed 
Yet another memoir! I should have mentioned that I have a fondness for those, too. This one I actually listened to as an audiobook during my commute to work. Back in the '90s, Strayed's mother died, her marriage fell apart, and she discovered heroin. With her life going down the tubes, she decides to leave it all behind and spend 100 days alone, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Her journey was really interesting to read about and she writes very well. There were some moments that were just gutwrenching.

What were some of your favourites from last year?