My Reading Obsession

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.

A few weeks ago Jude started having ‘band practice’.  He mainly plays guitar, but in the band, he plays bass. We bought him a nice bass last summer and he plays it a bit.   He was entering ‘The Battle of the Bands’ at school with some friends; Marina, Jude, Chris and Sean.  They named themselves ‘Marina and Some Guys.”  Well, yesterday I find out the actual battle was that night.  K and I went early and got really good seats although the auditorium wasn’t totally full. A bunch of Jude’s friends were there and came and sat by us.

They were the first to play.  They had one original song, ‘Bandwagon’, and then did a cover of ‘Seven Nation Army’ by The White Stripes. Anyone who has heard that song knows its very bass driven.  Jude was a bit nervous.  I’d never heard them but we walked in while they were practicing and they sounded okay. The guitarist and the lead singer were very showy and Marina had a good voice.  The drummer and guitarist were very talented.  Jude sounded good.  I was a bit worried because he plays regular guitar all the time and said he didn’t know the songs well.

Anyway, they were first and they just rocked it.  You know how inexperienced bands play a song and someone’s tempo is off, or one instrument is way louder than the rest, or you can’t really tell what the melody is?  None of that! They really had it together. I mean, you can tell they hadn’t been playing forever, but they just sounded great, and Jude didn’t miss a beat. Even on Seven Nation, he really kept that baseline pumping.  Loved it.

Seemed like the favorites were this other band ‘adammade’.  They’ve been together 5 years, already performed all over the place, etc.  But the singer was just over the top, not that great of a voice, and they couldn’t seem to get it together.  Their original song was good, but very generic to me. Then they butchered Kelly Clarkson ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’.  Butchered.  The other bands were all surprisingly good, very fun and their original songs usually beat out the cover, which I thought was great. There was one angsty song about the Principal being the ‘Warden’ and how he should free the hard working students. Uhm, dude if you’re whining about high school, you are in trouble.  I couldn’t help but smile.

So the voting was 50% the judges and 50% the audience. Our tickets had each bands name on them and you turned them in at the end.  Then we waited.  They had a really talented guy playing during the break, by the way. That was nice. So they announce 2nd place and it was  adammade.  Whoa!  Either Jude was in or Jude was out.  Guess what? He was in!  Whaooo! 

I just couldn’t stop laughing.  It was so great that he’d put all this work in and they’d done so well.They won $100 and some recording time.  He’s playing next week at Regionals.  Can’t wait. 

By the way, Marina’s father is a professor, and works half the time in Japan and half the time in Utah.  So this summer, they are all trekking to Japan, where they have a house and have spent much of Marina’s life. They’ve invited Jude for a few weeks. I am so excited.  When we went the first time, he was younger and didn’t understand as much of it as I’d like.  And he didn’t like sushi.  If this works out, it will be such a great experience for him!

It’s not as if my job is hard, or stressful or anything, but I still find myself this week, really, really looking forward to my time off.  Really. Really.  Went out on an audit this morning. I would have thought the change of pace would have left me refreshed. No. It did not. I’ve spent the last few hours watching my clock, basically.  Come on!

So I have plans for the weekend.  Reading plans, crocheting plans, resting plans, playing video games with my nephews plans….and no cleaning or cooking whatsoever.  What will really happen, I don’t know!

I’m reading Willa Cather at home.  Yesterday on the bus I started reading Naked Lunch again.  This may be one that I have to admit I just don’t get, like, or want to read.  I was sitting on the bus next to a guy who was reading his scriptures–this is common in Utah County/Salt Lake– and found myself sort of turning the book a little so this poor man didn’t see any of the forced sodomy, bestiality, or sick castrations I was reading about. And that was not the worst of it. I mean, Carl Ginsburg in court can say all he wants about the ‘value’ of it, but it’s a rambling bunch of meaningless, drug induces weirdness to me.  I guess I should try to read it at home where I’m not finding my normally liberal self feeling prudish and embarrassed by such a work.  Okay, I admit it, I’m a wuss.

Anyway, I’m just going to wash all that drudge off for now, and move on.

Ugh. I ordered my first CPA study book.  I think this means there will be less reading in the future. I’m pretty determined to use the bus ride for studying.  2 hours a day of forced concentration would probably be a good thing. You can’t blame me for dreading it to the depth of my soul though, can you?  No, I thought not.

Reading Willa Cather short stories now.  As I was reading the introduction, which included somewhat of a biography, I decided to skip around the book, and read stories inspired by specific neighbors of Cather’s. The first was Neighbor Rosicky.  If I meet my neighbors, if I become friends with them , and even if we do things together, I doubt a thought about them enters my head when we are apart.  Yet here is Willa Cather, who fashions thoughts, feelings, entire plots around the people she meets and spends time with. 

This particular story is about a farmer–Rosicky. He owns his land, and does well enough to support a large family of mostly boys who help, but never does any better than necessary.  The area doctor, who had grown up in the area and likes the Rosickys wonders why they’ve never tried to or managed to make more money. Then he thinks something to the effect that perhaps you can either live life or bank it, but not both.  Other families, who have become rich don’t welcome the doctor in the same way, or feed him until he’s stuffed, or care for his horses while he visits.  The Rosickys are the kind of people to make everyone happy.

As the story goes, we realize why Rosicky is so happy, and why the future of his children frightens him. Perhaps they will go through the awful things that he did in order to find what happiness is, but never have the real chance to own it.  It’s not exactly the philosophy that I have–I don’t think I would stop to earn more or have more if the opportunity presented itself.  At the same time, maybe I will never be as happy and content as the man that knows exactly what he needs and lives to be happy.

Anyway, I guess the point is, Willa shows us what it was like to live in a time of expansion, and of possibility, and illustrates beautifully the people that thrived in such a time.  Very effecting.  I was trying not to let tears go down my face–I was on the bus after all.

The other night I left my boots on the bus.  I’d worn them to work, because it was raining and there was a snow storm warning, so I thought I’d need them.  I didn’t.  The rain pushed all the mucky inversion away and it was beautiful, so I tied them together and carried them home.  But, it is not in my routine to pick up boots from the floor when I get off the bus, so I didn’t.  Anything outside my normal routine is usually forgotten. I’m like that.   I even have a routine for reading.

My commute on the bus is slightly over an hour.  So on the way to work, I knit or crochet and listen to my IPOD.  On the way from work, I read a book.  At lunch I take my book with me to the break-room, although many times, depending on who is there, I don’t get to read.  I’m sure it’s rude to continue reading when someone is telling you their life story, so I don’t, but I wish they’d realize that most fiction, and non-fiction for that matter, are of more interest to me than their past, present and future.  How rude am I?  Very, I know. But please remember I am a Bookworm, a Lit Geek a READER!

I have been reading less at home, but still tend to get in a half an hour or so on weeknights and much more on the weekends, depending on how obsessed I am with the book.  I have been known to lay down on my bed with a book and not stop reading (except to eat and etc.) until I finish something. Now, that’s not routine, but my daily reading usually is.

I started LOTR because I am having trouble sleeping at night.  I wake up, go find a comfortable position on the couch, plop a pillow on my lap to hold that big old book, and read away. Sometimes when I finally get tired, it’s hard to put it down.  Since it’s not my first read, I’m savoring it a bit more. Doling it out.  Hoping for it to last.

Finished Emma, by the way.  When he tells her he loves her, I was a bit confused. I mean, probably his countenance told her what he felt, but it was like a huge stuttering mess!  I think in the film version with Gwyneth, they cleaned that up nicely.  The end with Harriet is not very flattering to Emma’s personality if you ask me.  Emma sends Harriet away to stay with her sister in London, and allowing that now she would grow less attached because of her connections. As if she’d finished with her, so just be done with it.  Oh well.  She had her Knightley and didn’t need a project anymore.  Still, any Jane book is a friend of mine.  I do wish she would have reveled more in the ‘fall’ of the Eltons.  I know, I know, there was no real fall, just the fact that their hatred of Emma effectively cut them from the two best houses in the county, and from their particular friend.  Or the man they thought of in that way. I am quite sure it was no loss to him. 

I’ve picked a book of Willa Cather’s short stories for my bus reading, and will start this very afternoon.  Cant’ wait.

It was supposed to be snowy/rainy today so I brought my awesome purple umbrella and wore my snow boots. Other than the few little drops that might have actually been from the trees over me when I got out of bus, I got nothin’.  Nothing!  It is beautiful and blue outside. At least the little moisture we had yesterday washed away all the inversion gunk and we can breath and see the sky again!  Hard to believe that earlier this month northern Utah and Southern Idaho had the worst air quality in the entire nation.  Crazy.  They were telling little kids, the elderly, and anyone with any breathing issues to just stay home.

Still on Emma and LOTR basically.  One thing I’d forgotten from Emma, and I think they changed a bit in the movie to make her more likable was about Elton’s proposal. The silly thing was, Emma thought Elton was ridiculous to feel his station, which is above Harriet’s, should stand in the way of them being a couple.  Who was he to look down on Harriet just because her parentage and connections were unknown?  Then of course Emma is completely irritated by the fact that Elton thinks he can rise above his station to ask Emma to marry him!  Of all the nerve!  Oh, hypocrisy is absolutely  one of the factors of every personality if you ask me, but how fun to read it so well preserved!

LOTR is wonderful.  I really love how he’s taken this dramatic tale and filled it with such poetry and music, and so much love and humour.  Of course the best of literature must have the same, but J.R.R. Tolkien has a magical way of putting things, no doubt about it.  Frodo hasn’t even met Strider yet, but I’m already chapters in.  I love reading about the Hobbits. I think he wished there was such a place and that he was in it. It’s like the jogging path in the little Wii universe.  Jude and I are always wanting to move there!

Reading and everything else is much less still due to my shoulder/arm injury. I can’t stay in any position for more than a few minutes, and my left hand is still numb, so it’s just not very comfortable to read.  I’m missing it badly.  But I am feeling better and better, so hopefully my reading career is not over…

If there are any typos, forgive. It’s hard to type with 1.5 hands.

New Years morning, well, early, early morning, I was awakened by severe and intolerable pain in my shoulder/back.  Since then I have been in varying states of misery, and battling and weakness and numbness in my right arm–which makes it not so fun to type.  Today I’ve decided to type anyway. What the heck. If it’s not better by now, twelve days later, I’d better learn to live with it. 

We just returned from a weekend in Idaho Falls, ID.  K’s mother fell and really hurt her back, and his father isn’t quite recovered from his Christmas Eve surgery, so we went with K’s sister Julianne to see what we could do to help. K chipped off about 1000 pounds of ice from their walkways and did some cleaning.  Julianne cooked enough meals for them for a month and cleaned. I helped as able, but mainly kept mother company in the living room due to my inability to stand for any period of time or really use my right arm. I did, on Saturday manage to make one dish, and over the weekend did some chopping and helped with a few others.  Saturday we rented all three Lord of The Rings movies at mother’s request.  That really saved the day.  For those of you that don’t know, my favorite actor is in the last two, and it was a nice afternoon….

Reading.  Finished Song of Solomon and didn’t plan for the next bus ride so just grabbed something off the shelf.  Happened to be Emma.  I am a quarter or so of the way in.  It’s fun and light, which is good, since I can’t read for long periods now  (it’s hard to hold a book for long) and need to be able to pick it up after long absences.  Society and class play so much a part of the plot, which is fun and feels a bit silly.  It’s nice to know such a interesting record of how things were has been kept.  No dry history here!

After the movies this weekend I feel inspired to re-read Lord of The Rings, which means I won’t be in any new territory. Maybe that’s a good way to start a new year–old reading.