geranium

To h, very, very belatedly. I think she’ll enjoy the colors.

francesca

Wow, I really like this piece of furniture:

It’s the Francesca chest from Crate and Barrel, I think their link is screwed up because when you click on the photo of the bureau on their site, you can’t find it anywhere. I haven’t run it by m yet to see if it gets a veto for being too feminine for his home, but I’m thinking that this is as close to the frilly girlie boudoir design as I can get without going over the top. I don’t blame the guy for wanting to keep the lace and flowery patterns in check. The way our home is decorated should reflect the style of us both not just me. I’m thinking that clean modern furniture is the happy medium for us two. Although I have enjoyed the warm eclectic style of these two.

Still, I never got to get it out of my system and I guess I am a girlie-girl at heart or at least another neo-classical ornate furniture groupie after all. Chandeliers? Love ‘em. Tufted cushions? Can’t get enough. Victorian wallpapers? Bring it on! And can I just say that the selection of pink and red quilt fabrics at Joann’s are killing me, just killing me. I itch to buy bunches of it, but I don’t know what to DO with them. I have shown what I think is enormous restraint at the fabric store. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but I’m not sure how much longer this kind of willpower is going to last.

What I need is a little space of my own where I can girl-ify to my heart’s content.

two months in and already a failure

I've failed. It happened so quickly and quietly, but there’s no denying it. As of today, March 1, 2007, I have officially lapsed in the one new year’s resolution I made.

My resolution (for those of you not in the know) was to read a book a month. I don’t plan for enough pleasure reading in my life these days. I read one book last year (The Time Traveler’s Wife so good, please check it out.) and so I decided that a new year’s resolution was a good place to change that. A book a month isn’t at all difficult a goal for me, that’s one of the reasons why I chose to accomplish this way. So I won’t collapse from the pressure if I don’t fulfill a goal like: read 5 major works of literature that you have never read in one month for every month in 2007. Life enriching, true. But who needs that kind of pressure?

January’s book was Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. Great stories. Not amazing as far as books go. I guess it was a memoir of sorts and I’m no expert on memoirs (writing nor reading) (which is not to say that I am an expert on any kind of writing) but I felt like it wasn’t very strong structurally. It sort of meanders from tale to tale entertaining and inspiring, but without a nice arc to the whole thing. If you are a teacher, interested in teaching or just enjoy reading fine true life stories, pick it up and give it a read. It goes quickly and reads easily.

February’s book was supposed to be The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I started it midway through the month, but never put aside the time for it. Being that it was nonfiction, there wasn’t a story that pulled me in to keep reading. It was more for improving my mind and finally reading this oft-referenced work so I could see what the hub-bub was all about. So far I’ve read about the Hush-Puppies (don’t laugh, that part was in the introduction), the plummet of crime in New York and the syphilis pandemic in Baltimore (okay, you can laugh. That’s all in the first chapter.). It reads like a university course lecture which I’m fine with but I guess my brain isn’t after a long day at the office, or on weekends when all it really wants to do is be lazy and not think too much about anything.

March’s book is going to be so exciting, I can hardly wait. I put a hold on it at our local library (which if you live anywhere near or happen to be visiting, you should check it out. It’s a lovely, lovely library. Huge! With a modern furniture exhibit going on right now.). The book is Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay and it’s supposed to be in the library this weekend and I think (hope) that I am one of the first to reserve it. I have even taken measures to announce at the last Kenny family meeting that once the book is in my hot little paws, I plan to take a weekend off and hibernate with the book. If I lived all alone, I would just read it straight through stopping only to pee and maybe grab a bag of chips to munch on. But since m is pretty serious about our three meals a day, and sleep, he finds sleep important too, anyways, I will have to adjust what my normal reading marathons are like to my husband’s fussy demands.

Maybe to make amends I’ll try for two books in March. To make up for February. February is a short month too. Not enough weekends in it to get stuff done. All right then. I feel better about it. I’m glad I came clean with it though. Wouldn’t do to keep secrets about such things. Makes it seem all sneaky and subversive or something.

And how is it that I don’t even have a post category for books? How out of touch with pleasure reading have I become?? Let’s fix that.

dangers of boredom

Man, oh man, I wish I had photoshop all those years ago when out of sheer boredom on lazy afternoons I would wonder what I would look like with a new haircut…

I’ve been thinking about cutting bangs into my hair, but I was kinda chicken to go for it. Here’s what I did on Sunday to test it out:

Before/After

m thinks I kinda look like my sister in law. I kinda have to agree. It’s a small deterrent because I don’t want be mistaken for someone else (I’ll ignore the claim that all asians look the same, my grandma would have said the same thing about all the white people looking the same back when she was still with us), I just want to look like me. But a little different me. In a fit of spontaneity I drove to the barber’s yesterday and a very nice man named Dean Davies cut my hair for me:

I like it. Much better than the photoshop job I did on myself. And the versatility! (That’s what I’m trying to demonstrate with the hair down/hair up photo comparison.)

And now when I’m bored, I take photographs of myself making funny faces in the mirror and crack myself up. Ahh yes, I need to get out more.