home sweet internet/microwaveless home

Just moved into my new place. It took Mabel and I all effing day (with the exception of me having work at both jobs...nice going Jen) to pack and unload the UHaul. But, our apartment is on the second story with a nice little balcony and friendly neighbors. Plus, I get my own bathroom and walk in closet. Not too shabby. Only problem is we don't have a microwave, and my instant gratification complex has taken a blow. No bowl tomato soup with my grilled cheese, and no 1min30 oatmeal. Whine whine whine.

At the moment I am sitting in a coffee shop taking a break from unpacking. We have no internet - not even a network we can steal from a neighbor! - but there is a lovely coffee place a block away with free wifi, bless them (eff you Starbucks and your $4 for 2 hours!) I need to look up a run for tomorrow morning. 5 miles, YAY. Sorry in advance, legs.

Since I'm tired of putting this off but also just plain tired, Julie & Julia gets a super short review. Two words: MUST READ. J & J snuck up on me; I had picked up a few library books and tried to read them, but I found the literature stale and boring (sorry J. Austen, but Emma is lame). I was craving something different, and Julie & Julia was a breath of fresh air. It was funny and spectacularly written. Julie Powell's voice is so evident in her writing - I love that. Her chronicle of her (mis)adventures cooking her way through Julia Child's famous French cookbook, along with surviving marriage and a shitty little apartment in New York, is at times hilarious, at others heart-wrenching. Overall, simply a joy to read. (Side note about the movie: couldn't have cast it better.)

I wish I could do the book more justice, but my bed is calling. Tomorrow's goals: not pass out from a 5 mile run (my first, yikes), find a microwave.

"vacation"

Possibly against my better judgment, I decided to go on vacation with my Dad and family to Tahoe the weekend before I have to move. I've been trying my hardest to relax, but with a research deadline hanging over my head and weird/scary dreams about my sister going to college, it's been rough getting into the vacation mindset. Margaritas help, I've found. So does running 3 miles in high altitude with a marathon-pro of a father.

Katie is moving into Berkeley today. I got to see her for about 10 minutes on Friday before leaving for Tahoe. It was hard to say goodbye, even though it's not like she's moving across the country or anything. She'll actually be closer to home than I am. But it's more than her moving away. She's growing up, and becoming less of a "little" sister. Younger, sure, but not so little. I am unspeakably proud of her and all that she's accomplished, but a part of me wants to keep her as my little seastar forever.

Just finished "Julie & Julia," and will post about that as soon as I get enough of my research duties done to quell my guilt over being so lazy about it these last few weeks.

eye of the tiger

Today I ran 3 miles without throwing up or giving up. Just wanted to brag about that to cyberspace.

4 months til the Carlsbad Half Marathon. Will I make it...?

new things, good and bad

Saying goodbye to friends is getting old. I can't seem to keep them in California, no matter how much I pout. Will someone please tell me what the East Coast has that the West Coast doesn't?? Ah, well. I'm very pleased that the people I love are starting (or continuing) new, exciting chapters in their lives, even if they are so far away. And, planning a visit in the near-ish future helps me stay positive.

Luckily, I have scored myself a new job. Using only my brilliant smile and sparkling personality, I won over the manager of a trendy coffee shop in North Park, a neighborhood of San Diego that's a hipper, less yuppie version of Downtown. Nevermind that I haven't a lick of coffee experience, so far it's going very well and I'm scheming and dreaming of saving up my money for a week-long tour of the East Coast and all my loves I've lost to Boston, Chicago, and New York. Aside from extra income, I also love that my hands smell like coffee at the end of the day.

Mabel and I turned in an application for a fabulous 2 bed/2 bath apartment, also in North Park. Fingers crossed our leasing agent doesn't screw it up and it can be all ours. I'd write more on this, but I don't want to jinx it!

Oh, and as for the book club - what was supposed to be a work-free, totally vacant week turned into a frenzy of house shopping, research, and finding another job. I'm so tired at the end of the day, I can't bring myself to focus on a book. I gave Emma a shot, but was bored five chapters in. I'm not in the mood for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or The Art of Racing in the Rain, so I've settled on Julie & Julia. I spoiled the story for myself by seeing the movie before I'd even finished the first chapter, but Julie Powell's writing is so entertaining, I refuse to give up the book. Looking forward to reading a few more chapters tonight before getting to sleep early.

The Birth House by Ami McKay

Ami McKay's The Birth House proved a worthy opening act of my book club. Set in a seaside village in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s, McKay's novel centers on a young girl, Dora, mentored in the ways of midwifery by an eccentric old woman who has been delivering the island's children for decades. Modern medicine arrives in the form of a charming doctor promising clean, pain-free deliveries, and challenges the practices and beliefs on which Dora has been raised. As World War I unfolds across the globe, the women of the village struggle for the right to control their own bodies. A full summary can be found here.

I fell in love with this book because of its protagonist, Dora, the only daughter born into her family in something like five generations, who has just about every trouble possible thrown at her and still comes out on top, alive and kicking. Though wise and strong in her beliefs, I found myself loving Dora for her weaknesses as well, like how she longs for her own child so desperately that she puts up with, and even welcomes, the often violent advances of her good-for-nothing husband.

As a Vagina Monologues alumna, I appreciated the feminist themes of the novel, especially the inclusion of the "female hysteria" diagnosis of which 20th century physicians were so very fond of. Just by including details from this bizarre chapter in history, McKay at once brings to attention how this diagnosis was part of society's oppression of women, and makes light of how utterly, utterly ridiculous it was. Women with "hysteria" were treated with vibrators, for heaven's sake!! I was also very pleased that McKay consulted Rachel Maines' Technology of Orgasm, which is quoted in the "Outrageous Vagina Fact." Vag kudos, Ami!

I could go on, about the characters you can't help feeling passionate about (positively or negatively), the mysterious elements of midwifing that are well-researched and magically rendered, and the thoroughly modern ending, but you really ought to discover it for yourself.

book club, population: 1

I have decided to start my own book club all by myself. Meaning, I am going to make a list of all the books I want to read and blog about them after reading. This will work out great, because I have a lot of free time on my hands at the moment (thanks to work cancellations all next week), coupled with very little money (see previous parentheses) and a lovely public library within walking distance. I considered asking some friends to join my book club, but I read way too fast for most peoples' tastes and it would be unfair to expect others to keep up with me. So, I embark on this literary journey alone, with none but fictitious characters for company. (During this time it will be important to force myself to maintain contact with the outside world, knowing my tendency to hole up with a book and never see the sun or real people.)

My book list (open to suggestions):

POETRY

e. e. cummings

- Love, Selected Poems

- Another E. E. Cummings, selected and introduced by Richard Kostelanetz

- Tulips & Chimneys

- Complete poems, 1904-1962

Walt Whitman

- Selected Poems

PROSE

Emma – Jane Austen

Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

Julie & Julia – Julie Powell

Mountains Beyond Mountains – Tracy Kidder

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Suite Francais - Irene Nemirovsky and Sandra Smith

The Birth House – Ami McKay

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch

The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory

The Portrait of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

The Town that Forgot How to Breathe – Kenneth J. Harvey

There’s No Place Like Here – Cecilia Ahern

Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri

heliotropes

Yesterday I learned that a heliotrope is a type of plant that turns its leaves and flowers toward the sun during the day, and each night turns back toward the east in anticipation of the sunrise, to a chorus of "Here Comes the Sun," I imagine.

I am moved by their optimism and dedication. I want to plant a whole garden of them.