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 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:

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?