in which I learn to spray paint

Coming up, from April 13-19, is the  Tom Tom Founders Festival , and arts and innovation festival in Charlottesville. The other day I helped out by working with some local artists to spray paint a soon-to-be retired CAT bus! It's going to run from April- the end of May and local spoken word artists are going to preform on it while people commute around the city.

continue for more pictures… and some great books!

I'll take some coffee with my milk, please.

It has been SO SLOW at work lately, so I read two books the past few days.

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr came highly recommended by my father. It just recently came out, so I could only get it from the library from their "7 day only" loan shelf because all the other copies were out. This novel is set during the lead up and the final days of WWII. It follows two young people, a blind girl living in Paris and a German orphan boy. Each "chapter" is only a few pages or less and vacillates between their narratives. The writing and descriptions in this book is are so lovely even when writing about the atrocities of war. I very much enjoyed this book - highly recommended for everyone. 

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan is a fun one I picked up on the recommendation of someone in my book club. I liked that this book had a vaguely magical aspect without anything magical happening. The narrator is a young man who had recently graduated from college and promptly lost his job in the recession. He becomes a clerk at a 24 hour book store in San Francisco. Eventually he notices that some of his customers are acting curiously and taking out books entirely written in code and he sets out to discover what is happening. This was a very fast and interesting book! 

My dad asked me to post some pictures of the IX Building location that I have been working at lately: 

Click to keep reading!

looking up

Hello! It's rainy and gross here (but not cold like in Woods Hole where there is the possibility of anywhere from 2 - 22 inches of snow coming).

I read three books these past two weeks, but I'm only going to tell you about two because the one I read  last night/today was free on the kindle - I finally learned how to get ebooks! - and not worth talking about.

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett took me about two weeks to read because it was almost 1,000 pages long. I was shocked that enjoyed it so much! Normally I am not into books that are so long and although I love love love historical fiction, the novel is about building a cathedral which sounded suspiciously boring to me. However, this really is Follett's masterpiece and I will never look at churches the same. Although the book revolves around the cathedral being built at the Kingsbridge Priory (England, early 1100s), the story jumps around and focuses on different characters who are all somehow involved: Prior Phillip, the master builder Tom and his family, Tom's step-son Jack, William and his allies who want to destroy the cathedral, the beautiful Aliena, etc. so you get architecture, fights and wars, a love story, revenge, curses. I hauled that book around with me everywhere I went, very worth it.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey focuses on a modern day police investigator who is laid up in the hospital. While there he begins an historical investigation into the disappearance of the two princes in the Tower of London, supposedly killed by Richard III. I won't spoil all the details but I am thoroughly convinced that Richard did not do it and I am very pleased because I always liked him and wished that he was less of a murderous jerk. Really clever book, lots of interesting historical facts and a very important reminder not to believe everything your history book (or history teacher!) tells you.

I've been very excited about taking photos of birds lately!

This little guy I saw while I was home over break. From my online research I think that he is a Cedar Waxwing.

click read more to see more birds!

Jiggity jig

"Home again home again jiggity jig"

I said this as we were pulling out of the train station last night after our twelve hour train ride back to VA and Keegan almost cried laughin.  Um hello, mother goose rhyme, I am not insane. 

I had a great week home for the holiday! Things are going by so fast, I'll be home again in less than three weeks for three weeks!

I read a lot of books while I was home (24 total hours on a train will do that). 

The Flight of the Silvers by Daniel Price was a cool science fiction novel about a group of people chosen to survive the end of the world by being moved into another world just like ours except they never entered WWI, so things are similar in essence but totally different in practice. Very cool, love a fun scifi book once in a while.

I finished up Allison Leotta's DC crime mysteries: Discretion and Speak of the Devil, both very interesting diversions about the workings of the sex crimes and homicide divisions of the DC police. 

I also read The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker and The Maze Runner by James Dashner; the stories were fine and exciting, neither was as great as I was hoping but what can you do. The first is about Nora who gets lost in another world, filled with magic DUH, and she has to learn to survive while being hunted by her ex-husband who tricked Nora into marrying him. The other book is about a boy who is delivered to the Glade to live with a pile of other boys and they try to escape this creepy maze they are stuck in. 

My week in photos:

NYC from the train!

books books books

I still can't find my memory card reader (time to clean my dresser off …) so pictures from California are still on hold. However, I have read 4 books this week and as the weather is getting chillier, you might be looking for something good to cozy up with!

I read The Night Circus by Eric Morgenstern on the way to California. It was so well written that I didn't even mind that Keegan had to drop me off five hours before my flight so that he could get to class on time! The story is about a young man and a young woman who are taught magic using separate ideologies and then bound to fight to the death against their will by their teachers. That storyline however is pushed into the background by the setting of their fight. They inhabit a magical circus that travels around the world and the imagery is just so beautiful and fascinating that you really forget what the book is about. The circus is made up of different tents that spectators can wander through at will; you have the usual acrobats and contortionists and trained kittens, but also tents that are made up of cloud mazes and wishing trees. I've been craving caramel apples ever since I finished!!

(isn't the cover art beautiful?)

The next book I started on the flight and finished while hanging around Darcy's waiting for everyone else to get up. This book is actually our December book club book so I had high hopes. I was sorely disappointed. Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani takes place in a small town in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains. I guess maybe my reading was colored by The Goldfinch, which was really heavy, and the Night Circus, which was fantastic, but I just felt dumber reading this book. It would have been better suited to reading at the beach or something, pure fluff. The main character's mother has just died, and then these men are fighting over her, and she's finding mystery family from Italy; it was all just blah. I wouldn't have finished it if it wasn't for book club. And they just made this book into a movie for the Virginia Film Festival! I wonder if it was more interesting on screen…

the cover art, so girly (and not in a good way)

a photo from trip advisor from the real town of Big Stone Gap! Much more interesting than the fictional version.

On the flight back from San Diego to Boston I read Law of Attraction by Allison Leotta, a book the my friend Maria so generously sent me! I've got the two sequels waiting on my bookshelf as well :) This novel was also fluff, but at least it had some murder mystery and excitement. The author was a sexual assault lawyer in D.C. for twelve years before she started writing, so the characters have a genuine feel to them. The main woman is Anna Curtis, a new lawyer on the D.C. scene who gets swept up into a domestic abuse case that turns into a hunt for a murderer. But is everything as it seems?? dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnnnn. It was fast to read and I gave it to my mom when I was done! I am looking forward to reading the next two.

The final book I read yesterday and it was amazing and I have been waiting for years for it to come out: The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman. It's the third in the Magicians series, which is so great and well written. The series follows a group of friends from their high school years into adulthood. They all meet when they are selected to go to magic school (hello Hogwarts but with a lot of drinking and sleeping around and getting expelled). Basically Harry Potter for adults. This is another book where the descriptions are so well done that you forget what they are talking about sometimes. I really like that people die in this book too (not as weird as it sounds) because it feels more real. There isn't always a happy ending. My favorite part of there series are the magic libraries (similar idea to Night Circus). There are rooms that contain all the books people meant to write but never got around to. And then there's a garden where flowers bloom and fade as feelings are felt and then pass. Such awesome ideas! 

I'm now starting another book that I've been waiting for for years, I'll probably read it all today (seeing as Keegan is still asleep and I am bored). Hopefully the memory card reader turns up soon!! 

Also, I will be home in a WEEK FROM TODAY! Whoooo! As much as I love love love living in Virginia, I really miss my dog and can't wait to run her around on Chappy Beach. Oh also see my family.

xoxoxo

Happy Homecoming!

Here's a little song to get the weekend started off, Keegan is really into it these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYlVzGUpT0k

Book Club was fun this week! We met at a place I had never been to called Feast! which is a dining section of Main Street Market (http://www.feastvirginia.com and http://marketstreetmarket.net)

I branched out on the suggestion of Nora who has been raving about her fig preserves and got a chicken, cheddar, and fig chutney panini with a side of tomato pesto soup. It was really good! We discussed the book we had read for October, Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan. The group was split over all. I think that this book hovers around the edge of the YA genre which turned some people off the novel. There were some great parts that we all agreed upon, like how the author uses metaphors literally - one character, when she is nagging or angry, has bees fly out of her mouth and attack the person she is yelling at. Someone read online that the author based this mean character off his grandmother and that he dreads the day his mother reads the book and says, "You were too kind to her!"

For November we are still doing The Goldfinch and for December we decided on Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani. Apparently it takes place in Virginia and has been turned into a short film that will be playing at the Charlottesville Film Festival. I would go see it but I will be in California visiting my baby cousin!! (and everyone else out there).

I just finished this morning City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare which I do not recommend to anyone except possibly 15 year olds. Obviously I loved the book as it was 730 pages that I read in the past two days. This is the sixth, and final installment I think, of the Mortal Instruments Series. There's a lot of demon fighting and teenage sexual tension. There was a movie made of the first book, City of Bones, that was pretty good all in all!

I also read Lexicon by Max Barry this week. I thought this book was so cool and this one I do recommend! In the novel people are selected for special training based on their ability to persuade and resist persuasion. Called "poets" these agents learn not only how to persuade by being friendly, scary, etc. but by using the tiny sounds that words are made up of against others. There's a part where one main character is breaking down the word sounds that people with liberal political views respond to verus people with conservative views. SO FASCINATING. Although there are some unbelievable parts to the story, there are some really interesting ideas being tossed around that I think are applicable and important in today's society. At one point someone says something along the lines of, "people will resist a census, but give them an empty social media page and they will give you more information than you know what tot do with." 

I have not been up to much this week besides working a lot and figuring out my student loan repayment plans (NOOOOO)

Yesterday before work I did make this shirt though!

design was definitely copied from HowlingBird but I worked there for a year so I feel like it's acceptable. I'm super excited to wear it!

I have the next two days off work - going to do some grocery shopping today. It's Keegan's cousins 6th birthday tomorrow, so I think we are going to stop by her pool party for some cake :))

The coolest thing happened to me yesterday! I was walking to the library with my books in my MHC tote bag and a woman stopped me on the street, gave me a hug, and said she had graduated from Mount Holyoke in 2010! We exchanged phone numbers and are going to try to hang out soon, she's a grad student at UVA. I feel so lucky to be part of such a welcoming community of alums. As happy as I am to be away from Mount Holyoke, and for all the issues I had with the school, I really am glad I chose to go to college there. I think I like it better from a couple hundred miles away though!!

It's homecoming this weekend which means I will avoid driving through town at all costs. I hope everyone has a safe and fun weekend!

xoxogoat

October 15, 2014

Hey family! (Does anyone besides mom, dad, and Nora read this? doubtful, feel special guys - you three are also the only ones in my recent call/ text lists)

I have not posted this week because life has been pretty uneventful lately. I've been slacking on the reading front, I got a pile of books out of the library but had trouble getting into most of them; also I keep getting out books that are in the middle of series and not understanding what's happening.

However, I have read a few:

The Infinite Sea by Richard Yancey is the second book in a series about the post-apocalypse United States (very hunger games meets alien invasion). It was fine, entertaining. I read the first book (The Fifth Wave) this summer but by now had entirely forgotten what had happened so I was very confused for the first two chapters. I recommend these books if you're into the YA sci-fi genre but only if you want something mindless to read.

Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Anders. The book is about a family who's father dies and the mother takes her four children to live with her psychotic religious parents. The kids get locked in the attic so the grandfather doesn't fid out about them and they live there for three years. The book was hard to put down but really creepy and kind of disturbing. The writing was not great but compelling for some reason, maybe just because I wanted to see if they ever got out.

Made for You by Melissa Marr. Wow, looking at this I have really only been reading YA books. I think that the library had just gotten a now shipment in and I had already picked through the new adult fiction section. I really liked this book, it took me a day to read, another very mindless diversion. The book follows a young girl, Eva, who lives in a small North Carolina town. She gets injured in a hit and run which turns into a murder spree by a young man who is obsessed with Eva and believes God intends for them to be together. Not very scary or realistic but entertaining.

I am reading The Goldfinch  by Donna Tart which is a grown up book! I really like it so far.


This weekend my friends Anna and Leah came for a surprise visit! They are biking around the country right now, you can check out their blog here: http://quercuscountry.wordpress.com.

It was so awesome to have them here, we went to the farmers market and the harvest festival on Carter's Mountain. They also went to see a movie called Boxtrolls while I was at work and high recommend it to everyone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9-Df4ITW7o

Keegan with our flowers at the farmer's market

Leah and Anna having donuts!

I also want to thank Mrs. Bond for sending Keegan and I a Halloween care package!! It was so fun to play with the fake bugs (we now have a scorpion crown that glows in the dark around our lamp) and we ate the candy super fast :)

I saw some deer on my walk to work the other day!!!

I have been getting into the fall mood lately with food - here is some butternut squash soup I made the other night.

I took 4 cups of chicken stock and brought it to a boil with two sticks of celery and one carrot chopped up. Then I peeled and diced a medium sized butternut squash and boiled that for an hour. I mashed it all up with a potato masher and voila! Soup! Add salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

xoxo