Bookish (and not so Bookish) Thoughts

1. I'm pretty sure I just offered to paint all the baseboards in our house this summer while I'm off. I'm really excited at the prospect of bright new white borders (this is one thing we opted to not do when we moved in a year and a half ago), but I know that this is going to be the project from hell. 

2. I was able to snag an ARC today of Marisha Pessl's Night Film. Words cannot describe how excited I am  to be incredibly disappointed for her anticipated sophomore novel. 

[oh, and she's really pretty still]

3. My undying love for Vitatops is back. What? You've never heard of the magic that  is Vitatops? It's basically a denser muffin top packed full of vitamins, fiber, and even a little protein (for 100 calories). There's a bit too much sugar for my liking (9 grams), but still less than a lot of breakfast cereals (at least the good ones).

[add a banana and you've got breakfast]

4. Do you ever sign up to do less-than-appealing tasks in the future thinking "oh, it will be fine, I'll be so happy because _______ it won't matter?" For example "of, it's fine that I'm signing up to sell tickets at the Powder Puff Game on a weekend in May, I'll just be so happy because it'll basically be the end of the school year." Let me tell you, it's not fine, and we still have three long weeks left.

5. I'm going to the Isabel Allende reading tonight in Bel Air or somewhere that direction tonight. I've seen her before a few years ago and thought she was fantastic, so I'm  more than willing to make the drive. I'm currently 60 or so pages through her newest book, Maya's Notebook and while it's not as good as House of the Spirits, it's still enjoyable so far.

6. I'm currently planning out a week of lessons on an introductory end-of-the-year poetry unit and it blows. It blows hard. I understand the terms and can bullshit my way through understanding the content, but what really does me in is the stressed/non-stressed syllable nonsense. In order to understand iambic pentameter, troches, feet, and all those other related concepts you have to be able to hear what is and isn't stressed. It's starting to come back to me, but it's going to be a total pain in the ass to teach that part (thank goodness my super-smart husband has an ear and eye for poetry and is willing to answer my random texts during the day).

[poetry I can get behind]

7. I've been working on my epic "laying by the pool" playlist like it's actually truly important. Only in my backyard can you go from Rage Against the Machine to Ke$ha to Simon and Garfunkel to Tupac. I'd be worried about the neighbors if they used their fire pit less (people behind us, not the people to the side of us that I'm still on a creepy mission to befriend). BYOT (bring your own towel... or tequila... whichever...).

8. I'm hooked on FitSugar's workout videos right now. So many of them are just 10 minutes or less, which is perfect if you only have thirty minutes and want to target, say, arms, glutes, and abs.

9. The book buying embargo is officially null and void in three weeks. My cart on Amazon is already filling up in preparation.

10. I gave out summer work to my juniors the other day (I'll be taking all of them up to senior year, which will be great- three classes of kids I had, and loved, this year). They have to start writing their personal statements for college applications, choose a poet and read ten of their poems (annotating each and creating an analysis poster), and then read either Othello, King Lear, or Julius Caesar and write a paper. This now means that not only will I be reading Macbeth and Hamlet (to decide which to teach) but also those three. At least I won't be bard (get it? get it?).