read-off is ON

This blog was a small distraction for a few weeks years ago. However, given the choice between doing work and doing anything else today, I vote for my triumphant return to blogging. Especially seeing how the "anything else" this particular Sunday afternoon is currently severely limited by the fact that it's raining hard, there is nothing on tv, and I am single. So no distractions, pg or otherwise! wooo! blogging it is!

So I am part of this contest at work that is basically seeing who reads the most all year. And whoever wins gets a pretty sweet cash prize. Pretty dorky, but we'll see who's laughing December 31st! anyway, after a really strong January start, my reading's fallen by the wayside. Maybe it's because I can't get into books lately. I started reading The Sportswriter, but the main character in that is in such a dreamy, weird in-between state that it is sort of infectious (or maybe, too closely parallels my own life right now) and so it's hard to get really motivated. I just got the new Murakami, but first wanted to finish reading Espresso Tales, by Alexander McCall Smith, though it's kind of a drag. Weird how the man who paints such a great portrait of Botswana and makes Mma Ramotswe such an appealing character in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series really doesn't translate into modern Edinburgh, even though he's from there. Seriously, that first series is so addictive, and has made me want to travel to Botswana - and yet, this book - meh. I get the feeling he enjoys showing how much he knows about Scottish philosophers, painters, etc. The thing is, his observations about "modern life" (why do young people wear t-shirts with text on them?) come across as firmly issuing from an older Scottish gentleman.

Maybe I will just read the Murakami. Or maybe watch basketball. Pistons aren't on, but the Mavericks are, and I like that Dirk Nowitzki - he's so scary-looking, like he would really like to bite someone - but pretty good at basketball!

"How Not to Succeed in Law School" by James Gordon

Thanks to Mui for sending me this article, and thus getting me through the workday. Wish I could link. Instead, here's this excerpt of an actual judge's ruling:

This case presents the ordinary man-- that problem child of the law-- in a most bizarre setting. As a lowly chauffeur in defendant's employ, he became in a trice the protagonist in a breath-baiting drama with a denouement almost tragic. It appears that a man, whose identity it would be indelicate to divulge, was feloniously relieved of his portable goods by two nondescript highwaymen in an alley near 26th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan; they induced him to relinquish his possessions by a strong argument ad hominem couched in the convincing cant of the criminal and pressed at the point of a most persuasive pistol. Laden with their loot, but not thereby impeded, they took an abrupt departure and he, shuffling off the coil of that discretion which enmeshed him in the alley, quickly gave chase . . . .

people in spain love blogs too...

so the prince and princess of spain just had their first baby, and some weirdo has already created a random, creepy-cutesy blog told from the infanta's perspective....

http://leonordeborbon.blogspot.com/

domestic bliss

I've been reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books lately....I like the writing a lot, but for some reason, I'm not getting fully into it....as a series, it's no Anne of Green Gables, by far. I rediscovered those books in boxes while moving, and I think I might just reread those for the hundredth time. I always thought Anne Shirley was so great, even though she was way too into poetry. I wanted to look like her growing up, really really wanted to have red hair and gray eyes and freckles. The part where Matthew dies always made me cry.

What's weird is that in the later books, after Anne and Gilbert are married, she just stays home and has lots of babies, despite being a really talented writer and winning all sorts of awards. And being a mother is really important and fulfilling etc etc, but I mean, the last 3 books become all about her children's adventures and domestic duties, which is disappointing.

I just read the synopsis of the last Anne of Green Gables movie, which has her having adventures in New York, while Gilbert goes fight in WWI instead of staying on Prince Edward Island. (First, dork that I am: the chronology is all wrong - hellooooo, the war happened when her children had grown, and two of them went to war, not Gilbert... ) ANYhow, I can see how the producers were like, what the hell...how do we make the fact that she settles down and has lots of babies more interesting? Oh, that's right, send her to work in a big publishing house in New York, imprison her husband in a German POW camp, craft intrigues in which past beaux work undercover, put her in mortal danger.... whereas really, she just lived in the country and had lots of babies and continued to quote poetry too often. But, I love these books, and still think red hair is the prettiest.

now that I'm done with the rats book

all I am reading is my lease, and keep looking for shady parts that mean I'm being scammed. I don't trust anyone! But anyway, if it all works out I'll get the keys to my tiny studio tomorrow!

I am excited to live somewhere a third of the size of my Austin apartment and more than twice the price. And, to reconcile myself with the fact that I'll be living in a small small apt, this is apparently the bathroom of the hotel this coming weekend:
why hello, four seasons

RATS

That is seriously the name of the book I am reading right now.

trying to read more than blogs/us weekly

Flying back from Spain on September 11 was a little nervewracking, but I had some little monster kicking the back of my seat pretty much the whole time, and wanting to hit him was a distraction of sorts.

In the end, I didn't realize until I was there how much I had needed to go to spain. I got to talk to my grandfather, had my grandmother push 10 meals a day on me, was told at least a dozen times I look more like my mother every day, found out my cousin's seven-year old son really likes girls already, drank more than I had all year, and many, many more fascinating things!

I really am happy living in New York, and plan to stay here - but Galicia is just so great. While I am still all sappy, I want to keep closer to uh, my roots, and am re-reading Don Quixote, but this time in Galician. It's hard!