What I'm Up To Today

1. Ate breakfast (two eggs over easy plus two pieces of toast)
2. Played on the computer
3. Went for a nice long power walk
4. Showered and listened to NPR
5. Went to the library and returned to the Pulitzer-prize-winning novel I should* be reading in order to check out a new chick-lit-esque novel by a former classmate.
6. Visited Target, my home-away-from-home, to pick up prescriptions, yard sale signage materials, and buy a new pair of shorts. (Okay, the last one wasn't essential, but I look damn cute in 'em.)
7. Shopped for groceries--stuff to whet my appetite. Like chips and dip. (I had 'em with a salad, so back off!)
8. Ate lunch and began reading said novel.
7. Emailed my fall textbook orders.
9. Spoke to my presumptive future landlord about my presumptive new home up North.
10. Played on the computer
11. Got my ass away from the computer to work on academic writerly crap.

*Note: I have decided to avoid the word "should" as much as possible from now on. I often do what I want to anywho, so why am I wasting time feeling guilty about what I should be doing?

What I've Been Up To

Following Dr. Write, a list:

1. Reading for my own enjoyment! Just finished Crybaby Butch and Need More Love--both fabulous in their own ways, though I strongly recommend the latter, an illustrated memoir by Aline Kominsky Crumb.
2. Reading for my upcoming RSA presentation, including rereading an exam I wrote in 2004 on queer historiography. Know what? I'm pretty smart!
3. Having lots of fun.
4. Trying to eat more and still losing weight. And yes, I'm seeing my doctor tomorrow morning. So no, you don't need to nag me when you see me in Seattle. But you could buy me a highly caloric alcoholic beverage.
5. Watching Once, which was absolutely amazing. Oh-my-god amazing.
   
6. Getting grumpy with the archives, because someone was supposed to have scanned some photos and documents for me by the end of last week, and they won't get them done on time. So I have to go up and take photographs this afternoon.
7. Buying a pretty new turquoise sweater for a dinner date.
8. Rescheduling that dinner date due to the date-ee's illness, which is just as well, since I have to get that presentation done.
9. Procrastinating yet again on my presentation by playing online. Like right now.
   
10. See, still at it.
    

Book You Must Read

I know, I know--everyone's telling you that, right? But this is a small book--only 97 pages altogether, and several of those are photographs. It's Ann Patchett's What now? She developed this from a recent commencement address given at Sarah Lawrence, her alma mater, and it's absolutely remarkable. I read it in one sitting, at a local funky coffee shop, dabbing at my tears with a piece of paper towel.

Two snippets:
"I'd like to tell you to appreciate your youth, to stop and admire your own health and intelligence, but every writer has a cliche quota and I used up mine by saying, When I was sitting where you are now."

"There's a time in our lives when we all crave the answers. It seems terrifying not to know what's coming next. But there is another time, a better time, when we see our lives as a series of choices, and What now represents our excitement and our future, the very vitality of life."

So, I've been asking the right question, but I think I need to adjust the inflection. Not "What now," as in, what thing is broken or what disappointment is next, but "What now" with wonder and awe and a bit of humor.

The Book Thief

No, I haven't taken up shoplifting. The Book Thief is an amazing novel by Markus Zusak. I listened to it on CD, and I was laughing and crying in the car. It's been marketed as a young adult novel, but I highly recommend it to grown ups, too.

Death narrates (okay, an actor is reading in the audio version, but the character Death is the narrator, all right?) this story of a young girl sent to live with foster parents in Nazi Germany. Along the way, she steals her first book--The Grave Digger's Handbook--when one of the grave diggers accidentally drops it in the snow near the burial site of the girl's brother, who dies en route to their foster home.

It's a story of growing up, of mass hysteria and willful ignorance, of pain and survival, and young love.

Oh, and it's about books and the power of language and narrative and art and music.

(God, I'm a lousy reviewer. Just read it!)