But eventually the craving became too much to bear, so we headed to Barnes and Noble, because they have good cupcakes in the cafe and, of course, books. And we both got paid today.

And the last 8 or so times I’ve gone to B&N I haven’t been able to remember the authors or the titles of the books I’ve been hearing about from my online friends. But THIS time, I took the time to look them up. And so I’ve come back from B&N not only with a vanilla cupcake and a Vanilla Bean Frappucino, but also The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall, and Faro’s Daughter by Georgette Heyer (which I didn’t have to look up, but which I’ve been trying to find for a while). And Lisa took the precaution of checking which of the Russell/Holmes books she still needed, so she came home with two Laurie R. King novels and the newest Artemis Fowl (which I fully plan on stealing).

I’ll have reading material for my Shakefest trip, huzzah!

My title also feels like a good metaphor for how I feel about my life at the moment, but I don’t want to go into that.

I’ve been spending a lot of online time at Ravelry, which is still in beta mode but which is absolute crack for knitters and crocheters. I know is on there, but other than her, I have no friends (which kinda defeats the social-networking side of the whole site). Is anyone else in yet? Or are you still waiting for your invite (they’re getting closer to going public)? Or have you never even heard of it until now?

I threw my back out last Saturday. It was almost better on Monday. Tuesday it was as bad as it’s ever been. Massive amounts of ibuprofen and Thermacare wraps make getting through the day bearable, but if it doesn’t get better soon, I guess I’ll need to call the chiropractor. Grr. But– my insurance now covers chiropractic visits! Hurrah!

Speaking of insurance, I went to the doctor for the first time in a year on Friday. Got my thyroid levels checked (normal). Got a referral to radiology to get an ultrasound, to check for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. If I have it, then the treatment is birth control pills (which I’m already on, and have been for years) and controlling weight (which I’m already trying to do). So even if I have it, nothing will change, except knowing that I have it. Joy.

Having insurance again is nice.

Overall, I like my job, but there are two definite drawbacks. One is that I have to listen to KOSY (click on the link to see what music I am subjected to, and feel my pain!) for 40 hours a week. Not only do they play the same songs every day, sometimes they play the same songs more than once in the SAME day! I swear, I’m going to go insane. And I just can’t WAIT until they switch over to all Christmas music, all the time in OCTOBER. *screams* Ahem. Anyway, the other drawback is that, unlike most office jobs, I can’t wake up in the morning and say “I can use another half-hour of sleep. I’ll go in at 8:30 and only take a half hour lunch.” I can’t just take off early to go to a doctor’s appointment. I can’t suddenly decide to take a weekend trip. And I feel like I can’t call in sick unless I truly can’t sit up. Because any time I’m not there, someone else has to cover for me. Which is a huge inconvenience to everyone else. I don’t like feeling guilty because I have a doctor’s appointment.

Of course, if I weren’t such a responsible person, I wouldn’t feel guilty. Being good is such a drag sometimes.

I’ve got two HP plot bunnies that I want to write– one a genficlet about Kingsley visiting the Muggle PM, and one a romantic H/G piece set a few weeks after the end of the battle– and I just. can’t. write. them. The H/G fic was progressing at the rate of 1 paragraph per day when my creativity completely died. It seems, then, that my writer’s block has progressed past essays and into fic, which is very bad news for my thesis. If I can’t even write H/G fluff, how can I write criticism? *sigh*

Speaking of my thesis, I need help from some of you. But that can wait for another post.

I saw Hairspray the other day, and Stardust on Monday night. Both excellent movies. Except I didn’t like John Travolta in drag in Hairspray. Totally ruined my suspension of disbelief. Robert de Niro in Stardust, on the other hand, was hilarious. And speaking of Stardust– where has Charlie Cox been all my life? And do you think he’d object to a slightly older woman?

My recreational reading has taken an Austenish turn lately. I’ve started reading the Jane Austen Mystery series by Stephanie Barron, and actually find the books amusing. She does a pretty good job of capturing Austen’s voice, IMO. Then yesterday I read Austenland by Shannon Hale, which, despite its not-so-subtle insults of Northanger Abbey, I found thoroughly delightful. I was quite giddy at the romance, even. Almost giddy enough to forgive the Northanger Abbey digs. Hale really gets the Austen fangirl, though. Really.

I also started another reread of Pride and Prejudice. I swear I started before I read Austenland, though.

I don’t plan on seeing Becoming Jane until my sister can get me in for free. I hope I can set aside my prejudice and enjoy it, but I don’t hold much hope. I’m just so annoyed at the message it’s sending– that Jane couldn’t have written those books unless she’d actually experienced a tragic love story, and that apparently she has next to no imagination at all, anyway, since most of her best scenes, lines, and characters are copied from her life. That really, really bugs me. But that wouldn’t be so bad if Hollywood hadn’t also marketed it as 100% TRUFAX, when actually it’s (as Mags of Austenblog likes to say) an almost totally Made Up Story. Grr.

In much, much happier news– BYU Football officially begins a week from Saturday. I’ve been haunting fanboards. I’ve been eagerly gobbling up practice reports. I attended the Women’s Football Clinic and the Big Blue Bash. I nearly kissed our season tickets. I’ve changed my cell ringtone to “Rise and Shout,” and I get giddy every time I hear it. I ADORE football.

Anyway. I’m just going to post some random things that I’ve either been doing or thinking lately. ‘Cause my life has gotten rather boring lately.

I’m thoroughly sick of listening to KOSY 106.5 for 40 hours a week. They play the same dumb songs every day. And even when they play a song I like– a Carpenters song, or a few that I’ve got on my iPod– I’ve heard them all so much lately that I don’t even enjoy them any more. And why, why, do people remake stupid 60s songs? There are lots and lots of really good songs that came out of the 60s, but do people cover them? No! Instead we get “Groovy Kind of Love” and “On Broadway” and other such songs that weren’t that good to begin with, and certainly don’t improve with a modern cover. Just. . . stop, people. If you were taking these mediocre songs and making them better, I wouldn’t complain! But instead, you’re making them worse.

And if I never hear another Elton John or Rod Stewart song, it’d be too soon. Unfortunately, they play at least 3 a day. Hmph.

Vanilla Coke is back (well, it’s now “Coca-Cola Vanilla” and “Coke Zero Vanilla”, but it tastes the same). This is both wonderful and terrible news. Wonderful because I love Vanilla Coke. Terrible because I try not to drink caffeine, and I haven’t been drinking as much of it since Vanilla Coke was discontinued. Woe.

My nails and cuticles look terrible. I just bought some cuticle cream to try to whip them into shape. I don’t have much hope though– I’ve never been able to make them look anything but terrible. And my nails are so brittle. I guess I need more Vitamin E in my diet or something. Anyway, these horrible horrible cuticles have been catching on my knitting lately, so something must be done.

Speaking of knitting, I’ve been working on a silk shawl as a gift for Jen’s wedding (which was on Wednesday and which was beautiful and at which I cried and which I still haven’t recovered from, and all I did was serve cake for an hour and a half) and it’s turning out absolutely beautifully. Here’s a pic I took with my cellphone camera when I’d only done a few repeats. It’s much bigger now. I was trying to get it done for the wedding, but hurrying made me make stupid mistakes, which took more time to correct than just taking my time in the first place would have, so it didn’t get done. I am glad that I did the practice shawl (most of it, I still have to do the edging on two of the sides) beforehand, though, because if I hadn’t already had experience with the kinds of aggravating things that happen when knitting lace, I think I would have given up on it long ago. Anyway, I think I might be able to finish it by the time she gets back from her honeymoon, though. Or shortly thereafter.

Once I get that finished, I’ve got baby House sweaters for the niece and nephew to knit in time for the DH release, Lisa’s Hufflepuff scarf to finish in time for the OotP premiere, and then– I’ve got so many lovely projects on tap! For my birthday I requested gift certificates and/or money to spend on knitting things. So, in the past few weeks, I’ve bought lace blocking wires, 4 more sets of Knitpicks Options needle tips in the sizes I use most (6, 7, 8, and 9, if anyone was wondering) as well as another set of 24″ cables and a new set of 40″ ones (and it’s a good thing, too, because I certainly need the length for the shawl!), a set of wooden cable needles, and a magnetic chart keeper. And those are just my notions! I also bought the book No Sheep for You, which had good info on silk and also has a lot of cute patterns that I want to make. And yarn! I got three balls of this lovely, lovely DK-weight merino superwash wool that I can’t remember the name of to make an Irish Hiking Scarf (hence the cable needles– I haven’t done cables yet, and this is my project to learn), a ball of sock yarn to make my very first pair of socks with (haven’t decided what pattern to use on that yet), two skeins of a burgundy-colored laceweight merino wool to make Christmas-present shawls for my grandmothers (I’m planning on using the Shetland pattern from Victorian Lace Today for them), a cone of laceweight 100% silk yarn in Citron from Colourmart for a shawl for my mom (we haven’t decided on a specific pattern yet), and two cones of heavy-laceweight silver gray yarn from Colourmart for a Cap Shawl from VLT for me. And I still have two balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze that I bought in Laguna Beach that’s wanting to become a Victorian Ruby scarf from VLT. But I don’t know when I’ll actually get to that.

Luckily, I still have a lot of time to knit at work. Because I’m still trying to work on my thesis at home. Which is hard. And which I haven’t done much of. Next week, I shall buckle down. Yes, I will.

And who knew that when I decided to learn how to knit so I could make myself a Ravenclaw scarf, that it would turn into this? I certainly didn’t.

I still haven’t written up my trip to Laguna, or to New York. But I have uploaded my pictures to my Flickr account. Laguna is here and New York is here. Haven’t finished writing up descriptions for all of them, though. I think some of my “artsy-fartsy”-type landscape and scenery shots turned out rather well, even with my point-and-shoot digital. One of these days I’ll bring my SLR on a trip. I hardly ever have room for it. Not that I really know how to use it, anyway.

I really need to reserve my copy of Deathly Hallows. I’ve been putting it off because plans were still hazy, but there’s not much time left! Less than a month! EEK!!

I need to see Pirates 3 again. I’ve only seen it thrice! Not nearly enough.

The owner of my place of employment comes in rarely, but he never fails to make me feel like he thinks my IQ is significantly lower than it actually is, and that I’m doing everything wrong (when I’m not). One of the drawbacks of doing a job that’s below my skill level, I suppose.

Speaking of work, they’ve been asking me to create more and more specially-formatted documents lately. And all I have to work with is Word, which SUCKS when what you’re really doing is desktop publishing, not word processing (actually, it sucks for word processing, too, but that’s another rant). When my boss gets back (she and half the rest of the company are on vacation/at conferences this weekend), I might ask if they’d be willing to spring for something rather better– especially if they’re going to do that newsletter that they’ve been talking about since I was hired. I don’t suppose InDesign would be a viable option, but I might be able to talk them into Publisher. Which would be better than nothing.

The other day in a fit of boredom I read The Mysteries of Udolpho on Project Gutenberg. Now, I knew from past experience (and several classes discussing the Gothic Novel) that Ann Radcliffe’s brand of Gothic is more of the Scooby-do type (where everything that seems supernatural has a rational explanation), but her style of giving these explanations is maddening. At one point, the heroine, Emily (and as a nitpick– if the heroine were really in 16th-century France, as the novel purports, her name would have been spelled Emilie. Just sayin’), lifts a black veil covering what is supposedly a picture, and faints dead away. She then spends the rest of the book nearly fainting with horror over what she saw. But the reader doesn’t even get to know what it was that she thought she saw until almost the last page of the book, and then it’s explained in the same breath as what it was she actually saw. Which felt a lot like being conned rather than tricked. I didn’t get that feeling with The Romance of the Forest, though. So maybe it’s unique to Udolpho. Anyway, I’m glad I read it, as I now understand the references to it in Northanger Abbey that much better, but it’s a horrid book– and not in the sense Catherine uses it, either.

And “horrid” is a word that we Yanks don’t use much. Which is a shame, because it’s much more compact than “horrible.” I always think about this fact when listening to the Keane B-side “The Way You Want It,” because they use “horrid,” and it’s just another sign of their Britishness coming out. Which I love.

I’ve been helping my mom find and plant (we both do the finding, but I’ve been doing most of the planting– mom’s back has been bothering her. The doctors think she has a herniated disc, which stinks) perennials in our yard lately. It’s quite fun. Right now we’ve gotten mostly shrubs and ornamental grasses, but we’re hoping to plant some flower seeds in the fall. In the meantime, our strawberries ripened, and they were (and are, since we made jam and froze them) delicious. They were kinda dinky, but so much sweeter than the big ones you get in stores. Mmm. Now to plant some raspberry bushes. . .

My other BFF Nicole is in town for a family reunion and for Jen’s wedding, and tomorrow we’re going to go to Kneaders for lunch. I’m really, really looking forward to it. MMM, fresh roasted turkey on foccacia with Kneader’s sauce. And I’m saving my WW points so I can indulge in a mini Key Lime tart, too. Or maybe a mini strawberry tart. We shall have to see when we get there.

Speaking of points, I’ve re-lost about half of the weight I regained between all my vacations and starting work full-time (which at first meant eating out every day, although I’m getting better at that). Slowly but surely, the weight will come off! Although it’s leaning more towards slowly these days. I bought an incentive dress the other night, though. It’ll look great about 10 pounds from now. The new Kashi frozen entrees are absolutely delicious, are very filling, and a nice change of pace from Lean Cuisines (which I rather overdosed on, hence the eating-out-too-much phenomenon). Snacking on sugar snap peas is also a good thing. The new Hostess 100 Calorie chocolate cupcake packs are only 1 point per package (if you only eat one. If you eat two, then it’s 4 points for both :P), while the yellow cake ones are 2. Packs of mini Pringles are 3. I’ve been enjoying all of them in moderation lately.

It occurs to me that this post would be more effective when broken up over several days. I bet I’d get more comments that way.

Maybe that’ll give me the incentive I need to post more.

In other news, I signed up for a PremiumListener account at Audible, and I qualified for two free books right away. So I downloaded Pride and Prejudice (unabridged, of course) and The Eyre Affair. Got about 30 minutes left on the former, and will start the latter next week. Excellent. They’ve also got a “My next listen” thing which works pretty much like a Netflix queue, so if I haven’t used up my two audiobook credits, it’ll automatically download the next thing on my list. Right now Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is at the top (unabridged, it’s like 32 hours long. :P), followed by The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy read by Stephen Fry. I think I’ll put The Curse of Chalian and Paladin of Souls on there next. Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility are waiting as well.

Yeah, I love having an iPod.

Saw Corpse Bride tonight. Quite enjoyable.

the blind date that wasn’t. . . much of a date, that is

Well, his name was Joel, and he might have been 25, but if he was, it was 25 going on about 17. It went down like this. Jen and I drove down to Lehi, which is where we were supposed to be meeting the guys. When we got there, it turned out Kevin (Jen’s date) was right on time, but mine wasn’t there. He had been rafting on the Provo River, and wasn’t back yet. So we finally decided to go to the restaurant without him. We get to Chili’s, meet up with another couple, and there’s an hour wait– but since it’s already 8 and the concert starts at 9, no go. We ended up at a fast-food Chinese restaurant, where Jen’s date paid for both Jen’s dinner and mine. We made awkward small talk until we were almost done with dinner, when my date finally showed up.

He’s totally NOT my type. Bleached-blonde hair messily spiked every which way. Elementary school field day t-shirt. Cares more about his band than, oh, anything else that I could tell, unless it’s kayaking/ river rafting. So we sit for about 15 minutes while he eats, make more awkward small talk, and then we all head off to the concert– me still in the car with Jen and her date, since Joel’s car was full of his guitar and other associated band stuff. Turns out the concert is in Joel’s backyard, for some high school graduation party, and that the band (Tension) is missing its drummer. Ever heard Blink 182 without a drum beat? Yeah, me neither. So Jen and Kevin and I sat on the swings and listened to the badly-played music while young boys grabbed burning sticks out of a fire pit and chased each other with them.

It was surreal. So that’s what cool people do on weekends. I never knew.

Anyway, when the concert was over, they had planned on playing games, but it was already 10:30 by then and we didn’t want to drive home too late at night. The fact that neither of us had very much in common with our respective dates had nothing do to with it, I assure you.

So, yeah. Doubt I’ll be seeing him again.

So what have I been doing with myself since? Lots of stuff, I assure you.

memorial day weekend

Saturday was spent doing several things, among them getting a new cell phone. I wanted to switch my plan, but since I was on an AT&T plan and Cingular bought them out, they wouldn’t let me do it without buying a new phone. I got this one, which is rather cool. Much cooler than my old monochrome-screen-no-bells-or-whistles phone. Rather enjoying it, actually. Did you know you can download Pitfall?

I also helped out a bit around the yard– we’re still getting our over-grown and/or dying yard into shape– and we had an excellent dinner of barbequed hamburgers, with grilled pineapple for dessert.

Sunday I went to church, had dinner with the fam, and then we started on our annual trek to family gravesites, starting at a cemetary here in town where my Bytheway great-grandparents, my cousin Thomas (who was stillborn), and my Grandpa By are buried, then continuing up to Heber where most of my mother’s side of the family is buried, including my Uncle Ray. We left flowers on all the graves (including the headstone–complete with names!!– that my as-yet-perfectly-alive grandparents have already put up. We rounded off the day with a visit to my aunt Jeanine’s, because my cousin and his wife were in town for their brother’s graduation. Fun, exhausting day.

Monday we headed up to my great-uncle John’s house for the annual Memorial Day breakfast, which unfortunately was rained out. The pancakes still tasted good, even though we ate them inside instead of in the backyard. We stopped at Pace’s for our annual Astro Pop (wonderful popsicles, mmmm) and then went to see Star Wars. I really, really liked it. And I never cry at movies, but this one got me– when they started playing Leia’s theme and the binary sunset theme at the end. Curse you, John Williams! After the movie we stopped at the Salt Lake cemetary to put flowers on the grave of my last set of great-grandparents, then headed home. But the day wasn’t over yet! We did a bit more yard work, grilled steaks, and then watched A New Hope (which my sister-in-law has never seen). Good times.

So now I need to go back to everyone’s reviews of Revenge of the Sith and see your reactions.

and since then. . .

Work has been interesting, because apparently the power outage on Friday burned out the power supply on our file server at work, and they weren’t able to restore said server until last evening, so there really hasn’t been much that we could do. Business was back to normal this morning, except for the ususal hiccups that a computer disaster will cause, which is good, because we have deadlines coming up.

School is out for a bit, as the prof gave us the last two weeks of class off to work on our research paper. I’m going to be attempting to write the theoretical chapter of my thesis as my project. My approach is a weird kind of amalgalm of moral, cultural, and postcolonial criticism, so it actually should be interesting. I went to the library on Wednesday to do a bit of research, and ended up getting more than just school books. . . a few Perry Masons that I hadn’t read (or it had been so long that I forgot the plots) and a few Georgette Heyers– mostly mysteries that I haven’t been able to get my hands on, but a couple of her romances too. I’m rereading Cotillion at the moment.

Oh, and today I received a mysterious package from the Evil Triumverate. It’s marked “Do Not Open Until June 4.” Dang.

1) Total number of books I’ve owned?

I really don’t feel like counting, but several hundred.

2) The last book I bought?

An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott, on ‘s recommendation. I’m enjoying reading about the brown curly-haired girl falling in love with the rascally redheaded boy.

3) The last book I read?

Well, I’m reading the above, but the last one I finished is Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold. Eagerly awaiting The Hallowed Hunt.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me:

Leaving aside the scriptures, which would take four of my five alloted books:

1) Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery. So she’s a Mary Sue and he’s a Gary Stu and the plot is melodramatic and predictable– this book was my favorite for years. I even made a porcelain doll based on Kilmeny.

phone tracker app

2) Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley. My favorite book before Kilmeny. I wore out two paperback copies before I finally found it in hardcover.

3) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Obviously. My favorite book ever, I can never read it enough. I’ll probably have it memorized by the time I’m 30.

4) Cars and Trucks and Things that Go by Richard Scarry. I love many children’s books, (in fact, it was a close decision between this and I Can’t, Said the Ant by Polly Cameron), but this is the one I remember spending the most time with as a child, and which I still find myself pulling off myself today.

5) The Harry Potter series. Literally changed my life.

Five people who need to do this meme:

Gah. Who hasn’t done it?

Kate
Katrina
Laura
Amanda
Jade

In the other class, though, we’ve got a regular term paper– resarch, lotsa pages, the works. We have to have a proposal ready by Monday, when I have a meeting with the prof. I was having a really hard time coming up with an idea. I haven’t adored any of the books we’ve read so far, and none of the concepts we discussed have really grabbed me either.

Until last week.

We had read a book called Olive– not that great a book, really. It’s out of print and our of canon. But it did have one interesting feature– the protagonist has a disability. Well, they call it a deformity, being Victorians, but there you are. Actually, her– gee, what do you call it? problem?– is not really much of a disability– her back is slightly rounded, her neck slightly short– but she doesn’t even *realize* she has a problem until she’s 16. Anyway, it was very unusual for a heroine to have a disability in Victorian times, and it was especially unusual for a character with a disability to find love and get married, which Olive does. We talked about her journey, how her disability allowed her to do things that a “whole” person wouldn’t have been able to do, how she becomes an artist as a way of proving herself and. . . I had an epiphany.

Olive’s journey is very similar to Miles Vorkosigan’s.

And I discussed my idea with my teacher, and she agreed!

Heh. I’m writing a paper on Bujold!!!

Heh. That’s my thesis, anyway.

Haven’t figured out how Faramir/Eowyn fits into it yet, though.