Books are good for the soul

Yesterday I went with Rachel, Jackie, and Mindy (librarian for the Patients' Library at the UIHC) to deliver books to the kids at the hospital. It was so much fun to see kids who really have little to smile about light up because they get to choose a book to keep. Or two or three because we had so many. I hope we get to do that again before Christmas comes.

Speaking of the book drive, we need more teen/adult books because a lot of patients are not little kids right now (5 copies of Eragon don't stretch very far). So if you read this blog, and you shop at the Coralville B&N, please donate a book for a teen/young adult to our book drive. Heck, if you shop at any B&N please donate a book or two - a number of stores are partnered with Head Start-type organizations and could really use the help.

Scrooge really is right: you need to keep Christmas in your heart and practice it all year round (who wants to tell that to the ruddy bugger who didn't want to buy a book to donate to a sick child because his taxes do that - excuse me, what?).

Current book-in-progress: I finished A Temple of Texts (ow, ow!) but I started a new book - Why We Read What We Read: A Delightfully Opinionated Journey Through Contemporary Bestsellers (it's all Kat's fault)
Current knitted item: Pretty blue sock, but I should really, really start carrying the Christmas stocking with me
Current movie obsession: Hot Fuzz

Ouch!

I think all the muscles from my ribcage down hurt. All. The upside to having Deanna for ballet is that my joints don't hurt like they always do. She works the body much differently. I love her but I'm in pain!!!!

Turns out most of the new patients are a little squirrelly so the nurses would prefer that I not cause trouble and rile up the patients by doing surveillance swabs. I can live with that. We can wait until they're a little calmer.

My office is so cold I think my blood is freezing.

I get to play with my nieces tonight!!!

Current book-in-progress: I would be finished with A Temple of Texts if I weren't so dead-ass tired that I fall asleep right away after reading only half a page; the book is good (chapter is titled "Evil") I'm just exhausted
Current knitted item: Pretty sock!
Current movie obsession: Hot Fuzz (Angels in America part 2 is shipping from Netflix so now I can watch both back to back)

Help! I've been buried by boxes!

ouhh, ouhh. Or however you spell Tim Allen grunts.

The product for one of our clinical trials arrived today. All two pallets of it. So it took three trips using the receiving dock's trolley to get it all upstairs (and part of it is in another RA's office). The receiving guys wouldn't let me use the motorized pallet driver. Meh.

If I wasn't tired after ballet class (my body thought I was kidding when I said we were going to Deanna's class today) I certainly am now. And I still have to go out and swab my new patients. And then try and find an article about red and white in Tennyson's Idylls of the King because that article is from 1967 and isn't available online through MLA or anything. And then mediate disputes on BNBC because people can't seem to behave themselves.

Who said life is dull?

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch, I am only 17 pages from being done with A Temple of Texts
Current knitted item: Second pair of socks, Christmas stockings
Current movie obsession: Hot Fuzz is hilarious!

Post Holiday-blah

Survived my first Black Friday ever - the trick must be to close rather than open.

I watched the Samantha Morton/Ciaran Hinds version of Jane Eyre. I think that's my least favorite JE adaptation so far. Morton's Jane seemed very snotty, not reserved and quiet while Hinds didn't quite have enough warmth behind the gruffness. The scriptwriter needs to be flogged; Charlotte Bronte wrote plenty of decent dialogue and it needs neither updating or your own "personal touch" to be interesting.

I'm off to create a bunch of Middlemarch threads now. Come join us on BNBC.

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch
Current knitted item: Second pair of socks and I need to get cracking on the Christmas stockings
Current movie obsession: probably Hot Fuzz now

Sock virgin no more

I knitted my first pair of socks. I friggin' rule! Check them out (I fixed the Chaucer damage - note to self: keep all things made of wool out of the reach of the goat-cat).

Knitted from Artyarns Supermerino (hand-painted!), color 140, these socks are warm. Mmmm, mmmmm. They do have one teensy, tiny mistake - the cuffs are knitted in two different ribs. Look carefully. One cuff is in 2x2 rib and the other is in 1x1. But who cares. My socks fit!

I also promised pictures of my vest:

And my shrug:

Both are knitted from Cascade 220 (my favorite).

In other aspects of my life, I found out that the people who ride the mid-day bus are generally very strange. Today there was a man riding with a 4 1/2 foot tall stuffed tiger. No joke. There was also a day care center that took 11 preschoolers on an outing to the Children's Museum at the mall. Via the public bus. Mental note not to use that day care once I find out who they are.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and for the first time in my life I will not be spending it with my family (or boyfriend's family). I'm going to Annie's house to spend the evening with her family and the Donelsons. Should be fun. Please think good thoughts for my parents (who are driving to Illinois as usual) and for my brother (who is working this holiday, so please don't make him scrape you up off Interstate 80).

Current book-in-progress: Mostly Middlemarch and A Temple of Texts (because I would really like to finish that; I'm currently working on some interesting commentary on Rilke's relationship with Rodin; did you know that Rodin fired Rilke, who was sort of like his social secretary, for making business decisions without speaking with Rodin first?)
Current knitted item: Second pair of socks and I need to get cracking on the Christmas stockings
Current movie obsession: Three DVDs arrived from Netflix today: Hot Fuzz, Jane Eyre (Samantha Morton version), and Angels in America: Part 1; what shall I watch??????

Smell-o-vision

Suskind wrote Perfume in the mid-1980s, set in 18th century France but written in German. It was recommended by the professor for my 17th century Restoration literature class because Suskind managed to convey the dirtiness of cities prior to the advent of sanitation and public health. The amazing thing about this book was how you could "read" the smells right along with Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.

I was a bit apprehensive about watching the 2006 motion picture because, well, how can you smell what you see?

It's not quite the same as reading the book but Tykwer did an amazing job with the film. It's shot beautifully and realistically, lots of close shots to follow smells, and thankfully the scent trails weren't realized as clouds or anything hokey and cartoonish. I think the casting was well done; I'd heard that some reviewers thought Dustin Hoffman was all wrong, but I think he did very well as a man who is now a caricature of his past. Ben Whishaw and Rachel Hurd-Wood were also excellent (talk about dye job on Rachel's hair, that was some red).

I also finished off Wide Sargasso Sea, a good novel but a very painful movie to watch. The only good things were the scenery and the reconstruction of Afro-Carribean dances. Otherwise Nathaniel Parker is a bit all wrong (he was Mr. Skimpole in the 2005 Bleak House BBC adaptation) and the whole movie just seems to be a vehicle for Karina Lombard to get naked all the time. Boring.

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch, The Western Canon, Idylls of the King, A Temple of Texts
Current knitted item: Second sock (Chaucer chewed on first sock so I now have to re-do the cast off for that one); I'm still stuck on this, having finishing avoidance issues
Current movie obsession: Hamlet until the Netflix shipment arrives, then Angels in America

Ahhhh....

I have clean sheets and blankets. And they smell like lavender. And they're fresh from the dryer.

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch, The Western Canon, Idylls of the King, A Temple of Texts
Current knitted item: Second sock (Chaucer chewed on first sock so I now have to re-do the cast off for that one)
Current movie obsession: Wide Sargasso Sea - not much of an obsession because it's going back to Netflix as soon as it's done

And so, another football season comes to an end

The Hawkeyes lost - to Western Michigan. Got spanked hard, actually. No wonder all the customers decked out in Hawkeye Black and Gold were grumpy after about 7pm.

Pretty autumn days

Autumn is probably my favorite time of year. The days are crisp, the fall leaves are pretty, and I can turn on my fireplace. We've had a couple of very sunny days so I just feel bright and happy to be outside. The UI campus is also at it's best in the fall so I love to walk rather than take the bus.

The only damper on the prettiness today is that it's the last Iowa Hawkeye football game of the year. It's a home game and anyone even remotely familiar with NCAA football knows what that means. The town is crazy.

So I spent my morning at home (sleeping in - joy) and cleaned my desk. This is what I do when my life feels nuts. I clean. Or at least obsessively clean one thing, like a bookcase. Now I need to go out and brave the loonies from out of town so I can find some lunch and work a shift at the bookstore. What a great combination: Christmas shoppers and football fanatics. The Hawkeyes better win otherwise there's going to be serious grouchiness occuring in all the customers.

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch, The Western Canon, started Tennyson's Idylls of the King for Laurel's "Epics, etc" group, and I found A Temple of Texts while I was cleaning my office
Current knitted item: Second sock is getting closer!!
Current movie obsession: Planet Earth - I was trying to convince Kat of the coolness of this DVD and just had to watch a little of it when I got home last night.

I have a clean office...

...and you do not. Hmmm. Doesn't quite scan as well as "I am a baboon and you are not." In truth, I had accumulated a great deal of paper (memos, print-outs, brochures, etc) and was unable to see the surface of my desk. So I had a cleaning day. Death to dust bunnies!!

This is also called work procrastination because it keeps me from doing something really boring like sending nagging emails. Now that my office is clean I have to send emails. Blah.

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch, The Western Canon
Current knitted item: Second sock is almost done
Current movie obsession: American Ballet Theatre in Ashton's "The Dream" - Ethan Stiefel is so gorgeous

Whaaaa???

Can anyone tell me why Marie Osmond is still on "Dancing with the Stars?" She has the lowest point total each week but still manages to hang around. Hellloooo, this is a dance contest.

I would like to see the finals come down to Mel B and Helio (sadly, Sabrina got sent home which is crap).

Life is nothing more than a series of busy nothings

My office is freezing. I think the heater is broken. Already.

Went to a satellite presentation about infection control in ICUs - had a nap because I had already seen all the data.

Started Middlemarch and was intrigued that the opening chapter used personal fashion to discuss the characters of the two Brooke sisters, Dorothea and Celia. Had some dude on the bus tell me books shouldn't be that long (he couldn't pronounce the title, so I'm sure that he can barely read a cereal box).

I am almost done with the second sock of the first pair. Hooray socks!

Current book-in-progress: Middlemarch, The Western Canon
Current knitted item: Socks!!!!!!!
Current movie obsession: American Ballet Theatre in Ashton's "The Dream"