My Reading Obsession

This morning I meant to leave at 6:45am, since I had to drive. I rarely drive to work, but I have a doctors appt. in SL after work, right? So I can sleep in right?  Wrong!  I woke up before 5:30am of course, and so I picked up WWZ.  Big mistake. The stray thought that I might get to work early and get a lot done, since I will be gone next week strayed right out of my head. It’s a normal problem when I have a book in hand.  Darn it. I found myself, despite the fact that I was up almost 45 minutes before I had planned, running out the door 10 minutes late.  Oh well.  Zombies are worth it, you know?

Anyway–in other news my family has decided to run a 5k together this spring.  I got a training program off the Internet, and K and I started yesterday. It wasn’t even too painful.  It’s sort of a walk/jog program that amps it up a bit each week. Shouldn’t be too hard. I even looked at 5ks in our area. There are a lot.  It’s nice because we’ll do something together and usually the runs are for charity, which means we’re doing something good as well. Should be fun. You all hold me to it, right?  Can’t quit now that I’ve announced it to my huge viewing public.

After Alice in Wonderland on Saturday, my nephew Bronson is coming to spend the night. i see some cookie making and some game playing in my future.  Finally!  It’s been weeks and weeks!  Last night Jude was teaching me to play Final Fantasy 10-2.  It was actually pretty fun and I may be getting it. I doubt I could do well without him sitting next to me, but what can I say?

Well, I’d better get ready. Should be leaving on an audit any minute.  Fun, fun, fun!

AND I have my purple umbrella with me!  No rain boots, as I wasn’t expecting it, but how fun is that?! 

As some of you may know, I’ve sworn off first run movies for 2010 (excepting HP 7 of course!).  In the last few years they’ve been mainly crappy, and I spend way too much seeing them on a weekly basis.  So I’m trying to get out of the habit. The next two weeks though, will be hard.  The Crazies comes out this week, and I love, love, love zombie movies.  Plus Timothy Olyphant.  Nothing else to say.  Then after that, we’ve got Tim Burton and Johnny Depp again for Alice in Wonderland.  Aargh.  That NEEDS to be seen in a theater.  My sister gave me a movie gift card for watching her kids awhile ago. I’ve been saving it for one movie I really want to see and Alice may just be it.  But then what will come out that I can’t see?  Decisions, decisions.  Help!

Studying on the bus and using the commute wisely is not really the awesome experience I’d hoped for.  Make sure you understand the word is hoped for, not believed in.  Actually, the main problem for me is the size of the book. It’s textbook size, and very thick, but the cover is paperback, so it doesn’t stand up at all. It’s sort of heavy and uncomfortable. Now I’m sure if I had this on a Kindle, I still wouldn’t like it, you know? I understand my own limitations in the ‘wanting to study for the CPA’ area.  Still…it’s very tempting to take a book–at least for the ride home which is usually worse.  I never share a seat in the morning, but when I get on in the afternoon there are no empty seats, so I end up sharing with someone who is already settled in, leaving me a small portion of the seat.  The other day the guy next to me was studying some big book and I was studying my big book and our big books kept hitting each other.  His looked more interesting than mine (anything is more interesting than mine), and I was tempted to try to switch them, but I’m sure he would have noticed.  Foiled.

I’ve left The Two Towers and am on to Return of the King.  I am still aghast at how shabbily Faramir was treated in the cinematic version of The Two Towers. Hewas the wisest person in the entire family, and a warrior besides, and in the movie he comes off as a downtrodden second best. It’s just not right!!! Now in The Return of the King, we live for the first time in Pippins’ mind, and although his naivete made for many amusing moments in the movie, it was not his actual personality.  In Minias Tirith, one of the boys of the city challenges him, having about a foot on Pippin, andPippin lets him know his size may not be the best thing to judge him by. Immediately upon intimidating the boy Pippin shows his true jolly self, making friends with the child.  I love this!  He’s a person, not a punchline.  And I start to think that in all those long pages of words together over the course of two books, suddenly J.R.R. wants us to know Pippin, and to see his point of view.  Why?  Hmmmm.    Anyway, good reading, which will probably have to tide me over until next weekend.

Did I mention my window looks out on a one way street?  Every week at least one person comes down driving the wrong way, getting honked at.  It’s Monday and it’s happened already. This guy did not seem to want to acknowledge his mistake, either.  Finally three lanes of oncoming traffic seemed to  head him over to the parking spots on the side.  I am always amazed at how lucky people are though. They seem to end up going the wrong way when there is a lone car headed toward them. since the street is actually very busy and often completely full, that is lucky!

K says sushi tonight. Ridiculous of course, but it sounds good to me! Lately when we go it’s just the two of us, but I asked him to see if Jude wanted to go too.  He never seems to have the time or be around when we are going so it would be nice.

I just had four days off. Actually, almost 5, since I was off to take mom to surgery on Thursday. Why does it feel like I wasted it?  It’s not as if I didn’t get anything done.  It’s not as if I didn’t go anywhere or do anything.  Still, it just feels like a big blur….

Reading– I am about halfway through The Two Towers.  Sometimes movies start to take over in my mind and become the story. It’s fun to read this again and remember how it really goes.  The movie of Two Towers was my  least favorite of the three, despite Karl Urban’s introduction to the trilogy.  I felt that the plot had been changed unnecessarily, and characters personalities and characteristics had been altered.  If you know me at all, you know that is a no no!  Faramir really bothered me in the film.  I’m reading again and am at the point where he is met–should give me a chance to re-analyze and decide if I really hate it.

K’s Valentine’s Day present was the book, “World War Z”.  If any of you have read “The Zombie Survival Guide”, you’ll know that means World War Zombie.  Its full of recollections about the war.  We loved the Survival Guide, and the kids had been reading it when we moved into our new place.  They were very upset with us because we moved on to a ground floor.  That’s a big no no in surviving zombies, you know.  K had to promise them if the Zombies came he would take his big gun and get us a space upstairs. Paranthtically, WWZ is written by Mel Brooks son, and he travels around giving lectures, which are very seriously attended by geeks of all sorts, on how to survive the coming Zombie invasion. The nerd in me really wants to attend.

Zombie moves are the only horror/scary movies I can watch. I don’t know why. I have the worst nightmares if I watch anything with ghosts and torture movies just gross me out. I don’t want that in my head. Unfortunately, my entire family loves them.  So the good news is, when a zombie movie comes out, we can all enjoy it together.  The books are very fun.  I read ‘Pride and Prejudice and  Zombies’ last year and had a good laugh. I understand it’s becoming something of a series and the next one is ‘Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters’.   I will have to get that one next. 

One small accomplishment for the weekend was finishing Masterpiece Theater’s new version of ‘Emma’.  It was produced into a miniseries and because it had more time, left out much less than the theatrical version.  Unfortunately it wasn’t really my favorite.  Johnny Lee Miller is an actor I love watching, and he was fine as Mr. Knightley.  I think I’d read it and watched the other versions too recently and perhaps was a bit tired of the subject.  Supposedly, Jane Austen wrote Emma as a character no one would particularly like, and I think the actress in this version really captured that.  Or maybe it was the direction.  Anyway, I didn’t feel as sympathetic, and it seemed very rote–no freshness to the thing.  Maybe on second viewing in a few years I’ll like it more.

That’s all for now.  I think I’ll get some work done. That’s always a good thing. Especially when I have only 3 days of work this week.  Yes, that is an added benefit of a Monday Holiday when you’re on the four day work week.  Not only that, Thursdays are casual Thursdays, so they practically don’t even qualify as work!  Right?

Today I am taking my mother in for a cataract surgery, so I drove up to work so I could leave early. I wake up, it’s warm and nice outside, and I think, ‘I don’t need a coat,” so I don’t wear one.  I’m up to Sandy and in the headlights, I think I see a flake of something.  It was sort of a shock. It’s been beautiful and I looked at the forecast yesterday and it was sunny and warm 10 days or more out.  That one flake was soon many, and suddenly visibility was nada, and I was just so surprised.  By The time I got to my office there was an inch of snow. It is beautiful.  Luckily it seems though, it is wet, so maybe my drive home won’t be so bad. Everything seems to melt on the asphalt.

The other day I was thinking about the books I read in Jr. High.  Judy Bloom and that sort of thing.  I remember some of them were obviously outdated, happening in the 50’s or 60’s because girls wore skirts and saddle shoes.  I remember loving ‘Hail, Hail Camp Timberwood’, about a girl’s trip to summer camp.  Oh, the trials and tribulations of roommates, boys, and failing at macrame!  I myself went to camp one year with the YWCA, which was awesome. The red-headed lifeguard I’d had a crush on since I was 6 was there, telling ghost stories, and we got to ride in a canoe. It was only a couple of days. I went on a longer trip with my class, probably a week. We had cabins and swimming and all that.  Sherilyn Johnson got the best boy of course and I remember crying because I’d had a crush on him first and she always got the guys!  Everyone sympathized with me of course, because she’d taken all their guys too.  What was worse was she was nice and one of my best friends!  How could she!  Anyway, reading that book was really fun.  And all those like them.  I have a box of books from my childhood and they are all there.  Somehow when the time came for Chantel to read them, she wasn’t interested. She’s always been more of a ‘classics’ girl.  Oh well, maybe the grandkids will like them. I’ve been thinking of pulling them out for Kiki. She seems like she might like them a lot. 

There are so many memories of reading that bring back fun times in my life. I remember sitting on the fence near my mother’s garden bawling my eyes out for an hour after finishing ‘Where the Red Fern Grows”.  I remember pushing my door open a crack at night so that I could read in that thin stream of light.  Then there were the times where I would just disappear somewhere with a book. the big platform that was the tree-house my dad never finished was a good spot.  The first time I read my grandma’s copy of Pride and Prejudice I remember feeling so happy we  both liked something so much. She’d died when I was seven and even by that time she was so much a good force in my life I missed her.  Anyway, enough reminiscing. I think I’ll watch the snow falling for awhile.

Usually, as I remember it anyway, January and February are just frigid cold and miserable.  I even wear a coat!  I’ve been dreading them since I started this job, worried I would freeze on my walk to work.  Well, it’s usually chilly and I bundle a scarf around my chinny chin chin, but nothing really cold at all.  In December my legs would be cold under my pants, but now its’ fine and has been for weeks.  Wonderful. I know everyone will worry about not having enough water, but guess what?  I don’t have a lawn to worry about anymore, so I’m going to say I don’t care! 

I feel sort of weird about having only one book I am working on, but I pretty much can’t put it down. This morning I propped it up on the bar and read while I ate breakfast, and then for 10 minutes more, since I was a bit early.  And truthfully, it will probably take me a month or more to finish.  Someone else stuck a bookmark in it, so I’m not the only one reading it, but they’d better not get in my way!

The person I mooched Harry Potter for Kimball from finally sent it. I’d almost forgotten I’d mooched it.  I looked it up.  Mooched Jan 20, sent Feb 8.  I guess that’s not as bad as I thought.  It just felt like forever. 19 days.  Almost 3 weeks. Oh well, at least it’s coming.  Hardcover though.  No paperbacks.  It’s free though, so I won’t complain. 

My niece and nephew are coming to spend the night Thursday.  Kiki and I will hopefully be able to work on her quilt, and Walker and I will play Gauntlet Legacy.  We’ll have to go to the movie theater in our clubhouse to watch a movie because that is their favorite place.  Walker runs around, hiding under the lounges and jumping up and down the stairs; it’s ridiculous!

Today was my first day of studying for my CPA on the bus. It’s a big book.  Heavy, big, wide, everything big.  Not fun to hold. But I persevered. One session down, like 100 to go!

Darn it!  Life intrudes on the fun I guess.   I started the diagnostic test yesterday. On the first 20 questions I had a 60%, which is much better than expected–by me at least. I’m sure it will go downhill from there.  I think you need 75% to pass though, so that is a good place to start.  I am going to make myself work on it every day.  I mean it. Mrs. Strictness here. Right?  Uh huh. I mean, a C.P.A would be nice. What’s another year of studying?

In other news.  I went and had acupunture done to help with my shoulder. Although I am feeling nearly back to normal, my fingers are still numb, which bothers me, and my arm feels weak and sore a lot.  So this is supposed to help.  He put in a bunch of needles in my neck, shoulder and arm, and then hooked up electrical wiring to me. K said it looked like he was trying to jump a car–or wake Frankenstien.  Thanks honey!  The pain was not bad, but you know with electricity how it’s hard not to be tense?  I mean, electicity hurts, right? So I was sitting there while he’s telling me to relax going, sure, right, I’ll do that–as soon as you pull all these needles out and turn off the voltage!!

Our car is fixed–for those who didn’t know, it was in the shop for some time.  Now he asked K if I would consider trading out tax work on his biz and personal taxes for some of the fee.  Love  it!

I’m really only reading Lord of the Rings right now. You know how sometimes books get really addictive and you can’t put them down?  Well, I’m in the middle of it. It’s the last thing I put down at night and the first thing I pick up in the morning. Yesterday I was reading, sitting on the floor, book on the coffee table (it’s a big book) and K’s like, what are you doing?  I realized I was in the middle of one of the poems and was whispering it to myself.  They are soooo much better read aloud. The sound and poetry come through and it’s much more understandable if you ask me.  He laughed, but it’s true!!!  Try it. If you’re every reading prose with some poetry thrown in.

Whew!  CPA study guide didn’t come. Guess I should track it, right?  Hmmmm.

Dinner last night was really good.  Well, the Raj Chicken was, but the lamb kabobs, not so much.  What I love about Indian food is you look at the listed ingredients and think ‘ick’ and then you taste it and it is delicious.  My chicken had mangoes and tomatoes and a bunch of other stuff I’d never put together.  The flat bread was delicious.  Now that I’ve had Nimeche’s homemade rice, the restaurant’s seemed a bit flat, but still good. 

Has anyone seen the movie Gamer?  We rented it this weekend and thought it was a piece O crap.  Boring, tired, completely gratuitous in every way…a waste of an hour plus.  So one of K’s workmates is into movies and he loved it.  Ick. WTH?  You are not a movie person if you thought it interesting at all, you are a carnival lover.  Go watch Transformers and be quiet.

On that note, Miramax is quietly being sucked into it’s parent studio.  Frightening. This is the company that made it possible for indie movies to be successful, and they are gone.  We’re talking The Station Agent, The English Patient, Kill Bill I & II, Good Will Hunting, Blue, Clerks, Cold Mountain, and really the one that started it all, sex, lies & videotape.  I guess from now on we are just going to be watching white bread again.  I’m a bit depressed. I’ve thought for several years the quality of movies has been in decline, and I have the feeling this will not help.  By the way, I sat next to Harvey Weinstein of Miramax at a movie screening at Sundance one night.  Well, he was on the end seat of his row and I was across the aisle.  Folding chairs and stuff we were about 3 feet apart.   Russell Crowe was on the other side of Harvey, and his girlfriend (now wife) was sitting behind him, as they were trying to play up the Nicole Kidman/Russell Crowe possibility in the press that year.  How’s that for name dropping?

Today is my Friday and I am glad for it. K made an appointment for me with an acupuncturist tomorrow morning though, so that is a bit scary.  I’m basically nearly completely better, but still have 2 fingers that are numb. This is supposed to help. I am terrified.  Don’t like needles, never have. K says he’ll go with me. 

Anyway, back to books. Sort of.  As I read LOTR, I am realizing what a great job Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh did with the screenplay. The important points are there, but the story was edited to make it much more dramatic and give better shots for the cinematographer.  I love the book and in a perfect world a movie could be everything, but in our world, he did a great job.

I know it misery and unhappiness are coming. I can feel that CPA FAR Exam study book traversing the country toward me, sucking the life out of future bus rides, ruining what has been an enjoyable hour of reading and relaxation.  Sigh.  As today might be my last day, I went ahead and brought Lord of The Rings with me, even though it weighs 10 pounds or so. Okay, maybe 8. Or 5. Whatever! It makes a huge pooch in my backpack, believe me!  Still, I thought it appropriate for my possible last ride of freedom. 

I have the feeling that CPA Exam texts won’t really translate into interesting blogs. I don’t think I have many followers that are accountants. 

I woke up a few minutes early this morning and sat down to read LOTR.  It’s funny, I look at the clock and think, I shouldn’t get started, I won’t want to quit, and, I’ll only have time for a few pages.  I could not resist though, and snuggled in really quick to the couch. And I wasn’t even running late this morning. 

K is in Salt Lake, so we may go to lunch. May not, but may.  He is with his boss/partner.  I guess I’ll say partner since we did invest and have a percentage now, right? 

Anyway, nothing much new, but tonight we are going out for Indian food. Neeradj, the guy from India that’s been here for 3 months working on the programming is leaving tomorrow.  So what do we do? Ask him out for Indian food. He’ll be there in 48 hours, but what the heck. The last one they went to he said was not good Indian food, so we want to try  another place to see if he likes it. Then we’ll know where to go. Of course if we eat out it is generally sushi–everything else we can make ourselves.  Some other people from K’s office might go, which would make it fun.  Jude has band practice, so he won’t be with us.  Surprise surprise.  Win one competition and suddenly all he cares about is improving his technical performance.  Jeez!

Saturday morning I woke up at 5:30am, as I normally do. The house is quiet, and I don’t want to wake the rest of the family, so I usually read.  I went out to the couch and found a comfy position with my feet up on our battered coffee table (Yes, battered from years of children and friends, drawing, denting, scratching.  When the are gone, we’ll get a nice one), pulled a cover from the basket next to the couch and wrapped up, propped my right arm up on two pillows and put another one on my lap to hold the book, and preceded to pick up where I’d left off in Lord of The Rings.  It had been a week or so since I’d read in it.  It’s too big for the bus, so it’s my main weekend reading.   Anyway, it felt so cozy, so quiet, and I had the time all to myself.  I love that time. It feels like extravagance. 

Lives today are noisy and busy, and there is always something that needs to be done.  Reading is something that may not contribute to any of that, but it contributes to my mind, and my soul, if I can be so corny.  For a time, I escape to another place, and in that place I can drift along on the surface, or I can look deeper, for meaning, and for things that relate to me, that mean something to me.  In a way it’s very zen. 

I read once, a long time ago, that in Buddhism, part of the meditation in life is to focus on one thing.  If you are peeling potatoes, peel potatoes. If you are running, run.  If you are meditating, just meditate.  With electronics and music and everything going on, I think no one really takes that time to just do one thing.  When I knit or quilt, do housework or cook, I always have the t.v. on, or music playing.  I am never just doing one thing.  With reading, you can’t really do anything else at the same time.  And I think that is a good thing.  Why do we always have to be entertained, and have every sense filled to the max?

I’ve noticed over the years my reading time being squeezed until I get a book I can’t put down.  It’s something I am really pushing against, trying to give reading a place in my every day.  The payoff is the stories, emotions, and lives that I read, learn, and experience.  I sometimes feel sorry when someone doesn’t have that.

Recently I’d read ‘Neighbor Rosicky’, a short story by Willa Cather. I encouraged Kimball to read it too, knowing it wasn’t  his thing.  He loved it.  Bingo!  He got something out of it.  That’s what I wish and hope for everyone.