Summer Reading Update

I finished reading Faking It by Jennifer Crusie this weekend. It was really good - great character development, the plot line was interesting, and I was happily surprised by the ending. A lot of the time, once the major story lines have been wrapped up and the heroine has her hero, the last fifty pages or so are basically filler. This book managed to keep me interested and guessing until the very end. Good stuff. I started Welcome to Temptation this morning. I wish I had read Temptation first, since they have overlapping characters and it looks like Temptation is first, chronologically. But, since there seem to be no overlapping plot lines, I think it's ok.

Someone told me about something that I wanted to add to my summer reading list. I don't remember what it was. hmmm...

Summer Reading

I finally finished my paper. As it turns out, I'm an idiot. I recently switched to Mac and use Word for Mac. Word for Mac is not the same as Word for Microsoft. It is compatible, which is super, but it just looks a little different. Well, it turns out that when I thought I was double-spacing my paper, I was actually setting it at 1.5. Which isn't double. So, I wasn't as far behind as I thought. Whoops. It still wasn't the best thing I've ever written, but it would have had to grow by 5-7 pages to grow at all. So, it was little short and probably could have used more editing, but it is done and now I am free to read at my leisure.

I haven't had time to read a book for fun since Christmas. Here is what I'm planning to read, in no particular order, in the next 5 weeks before school starts.

1. Faking It by Jennifer Crusie
2. All U Can Eat by Emma Holly
3. Lady Anne's Dangerous Man by Jeanne Westin
4. Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie
5. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
6. Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers
7. Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 by Garrison Keillor
8. Mohawk by Richard Russo

Clearly, my class on romance novels has inspired me. I loved Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie so much, I bought a bunch of her other books (including one that I've already read, though I didn't know that at the time). I want to read The 7 Habits because I think I could be more effective in my life, and I use the Franklin-Covey system so... It seems to make sense. My boss also lent me that one on CD, so I can listen to it in the car and read it - sort of a double whammy to hope it sinks in a little.

It's kind of a lot, but I think I can manage. I started Mohawk just after Christmas and didn't get very far before school started. The romances generally read pretty quickly. I'll keep you posted.

Meh

I was up late last night, reading this blog. I was supposed to be working on my paper, and I did a little. But then I made the mistake of checking out some of my friends' blogs and found a link to that and I was hooked. Then, I forced myself to get back to the paper, thought I was doing pretty good, discovered I wasn't and went to bed.

So now I have no paper, am ridiculously late, actually, with that paper, and I'm tired.

Apparently, when I'm tired, I crave cookies.

Which made me think of this:

I Am a Bad Student

It is currently 11pm, and my paper for my summer class is nearly a week overdue. If I get it to my professor tomorrow (early) he can grade it in time to turn in my grade to the school. If not, I get an incomplete for the class and he grades it when he can, and I don't know when that will be.

I have no excuses. I loved this class - summer class in Romance Fiction? Come on. It doesn't get much better than that. I like the book I'm writing on - Julia Quinn's "The Viscount Who Loved Me," but I am just not that inspired to write. I feel like everything I'm saying right now (in my paper) is trite and basically at a sub-par undergraduate level. I'm supposed to know stuff now. I'm supposed to be able to come up with a theory and find evidence in the text and it just isn't happening.

But I'm running out of time and I have to get it done. I was doing so well and then, I made the mistake of reformatting.

See, I write my papers single-spaced and in the default font. Then, when I'm done (or stuck and think I have enough for the minimum page requirement) I reformat, slap on a concluding paragraph to tie everything up in a nice bow and call it a day. I didn't think this paper was "done" but I did think it was long enough. Um... No. I'm barely halfway to the minimum length and I ALREADY feel like I'm repeating myself.

So, it's back to my secondary sources to see if there is some more stuff I can throw in this paper.

I'm so disappointed in myself.

I Have Great Timing

I'm going to Atlanta on the 10th of August to meet my new nephew. I planned the trip so that I hit both my younger brother and my mom's birthdays. My parents are throwing a party that weekend, which they have deemed 60/60/20 - they both turned 60 this year and are celebrating their 20th anniversary. So, it was good timing.

Except that we have tickets to the Sox game on the 11th.


And it's Elvis night.

And the first meeting of my new book club is Saturday afternoon.


And Super Diamond is playing the House of Blues on the 12th.


Dammitt! I love the Sox, and we only had tickets to four games this season (one of which is tonight, yay!). So, that's a bummer because I love baseball games, and I hate to miss out. I have loved Elvis since... I can't actually remember when my love began, but I love him. I went to Graceland a few years ago, and the best Valentine's Day gift I ever got was a Vermont Teddy Bear dressed like Elvis. Super Diamond, if you don't know, is a Neil Diamond cover band. Don't laugh. They're AWESOME. It was one of the first concerts that Boyfriend and I went to together, and it has sort of become an annual event - we even went to see them when our Vegas vacation coincided with Super Diamond's schedule. I swear, that one wasn't intentional. I was really excited about my new book club, which was inspired by the recent class I took in popular romance fiction. It has been a long time since I was in a book club and, being in school, I rarely get to read for fun. I'll still read the book, of course, but I was really looking forward to talking about it.

Meeting my nephew is worth missing these things but... I really wish I do all of these things.

Liar!

That billboard from the last post? It's a fake. Apparently, there is also one in LA and NYC. "Emily" has a blog connected to the New York billboard, complete with a video of "Steven" and Emily's former best friend "Laura" making out and checking into a hotel. According to the (really poorly written) blog, she's going to torture him for 14 days, so we'll see what this is an ad for then. One person speculated that it was for a show on Court TV, another for a chick-lit novel. Personally, I think it's a bad choice for just about anything. Her blog is poorly written, which doesn't bode well for some forthcoming novel, and her tactics are over the top and annoying - something only acceptable in characters we've already come to love. From an anonymous "Emily," they're just annoying.

I'm sorry that I pointed this trash out. Luckily, I only have one regular reader (Hi Mavis!), so I didn't help too much in the spreading of the crap.

Best Billboard Ever

I was walking back to work today, after a lovely lunch at the awesome McDonald's on 600 N Clark in Chicago. As you head west down Ontario, there is the best billboard ever up on the south side of the street on the side of the Ontourage building, across from Gino's East.

In case the picture is too small, it reads:

Hi Steven,
Do I have your attention now?
I know all about her, you dirty, sneaky, immoral, unfaithful, poorly-endowed slimeball.
Everything's caught on tape.
Your (soon-to-be-ex) Wife,
Emily
p.s. I paid for this billboard from OUR join bank account

Now, I don't know if this is real or not. If so, I'm hoping Oprah calls this woman and puts her on her show, because I think this is awesome. There is no logo or anything to identify it as being an ad - though ads have been sneaky before. I can't possibly imagine what this would be an ad for, though, so I think it's for real.

Hi, I'm a Mac

I did it. I switched. I have to admit, it was those damn commercials. I fell for it. I mean, it isn't that I want to be that kid from Dodgeball or that I didn't want to be the guy in the suit. I just like the look of the commercials. Plus, my Macbook is totally sexy. It's sleek and white and it is just so pretty.

There are some downsides. I now have to consider if stuff is available for Mac. Boo. I was going to get a new computer game - some fun little treat for my birthday- and went to Best Buy. They don't carry games for Mac. Boo.

But, I was able to use iPhoto to put together a truly awesome slide show comparing my uncle to Tom Selleck, and then I used iTunes so that the whole thing could be set to the theme song from Magnum P.I.

That alone was worth it, I think.

TMI

You know how if you go too long without doing laundry, you run into issues finding the proper things to wear? I have been doing my laundry, but we were so backed up that I was focused on getting the biggest loads in first - so I washed a lot of towels, pants and shirts, that kind of stuff. Because I try to take really good care of my bras, they get their own small delicate cycle load before they air-dry. So I haven't washed those in a while. Which leads me to today's predicament. I was out of bras. It came down to a sports bra - which results in the uniboob look that doesn't really "go" with my office-appropriate clothes - or a convertible bra. Yes. I am wearing one of those bras with the crazy straps that wrap around you so you can be strapless, backless, whatever. It isn't comfortable. Plus, it makes me way to conscious of my boobs. Seriously. It's got a tad bit of push-up going on and I'm just uncomfortable. I have to do laundry tonight so that I don't have to go through this again tomorrow.

Behind

I found myself actually checking my own blog last week, just to see if anything was different. *sigh* I guess that means I have to do something about it.

I have a bunch of things I want to say, but I'm thinking I might separate them into different posts, because they're all on different topics. Since work is like a ghost town today, and I plan on not doing any actual work, I should have something more to post by the end of the day.

Note to my readers... um... should they ever appear.

Please send me some questions for my Girls Guide series. You must have other sporting questions. Otherwise, prepare yourself for an essay on the wonderfulness that is AJ Pierzynski, Jim Thome, Joe Crede, and the rest of your 2006 Chicago White Sox. God! How great was the game on Saturday! Did you see the comeback? How awesome is it that it was AJ who hit the three-run homer to win the game when they were down by two in the ninth with two outs? THAT is why I love baseball.