One of the reasons I haven't been writing every day is simple writer's block. I just don't know what to write about. So I signed up for the 30 Days of Lists. Every day for the month of March, they will give me a writing prompt. Some of them are lists (for example, 'Name your 5 favorite female TV characters.') but some of them are not. I'm hoping that this will get the creative juices churning again and I will find that writing spark once more. My friend, Heidianna, did the December version of the list over on her blog, In The Spice Rack and it was super cool. I can't wait to start!
My Salad Obsession
Yes, this post is very late tonight. That is because my family went to Panera Bread for dinner. See, I have this obsession with salads. I adore salads. Panera Bread has this amazing Steak & Blue Cheese salad. (Unfortunately, this particular salad is no longer on their website. I hope they aren't getting rid of it.) So, despite the fact that I had a Chicken Caesar Salad from Saladworks for lunch, I had yet another salad for dinner. I am OK with this.
I am the strange girl that will order salad when everyone else is eating hamburgers. I will be the one asking "Is everyone finished eating salad?" when I notice that there is still salad left in the communal salad bowl. (This happens at home a lot. I then take the huge bowl of leftover salad and plop down in front of the TV to try to put myself in a salad coma. I have never reached that point. Yet.) If the lettuce/spinach/whatever is fresh enough, I don't even require dressing. I love salad.
So I'm asking you to give me your favorite salad recipe. Have an awesome dressing? Do you make your salad with some weird ingredient? Tell me about it. I need new salads to try!
An Abundance of Katherines
I am trying really hard to read more books. It has been a long time since I sat down and truly read a book. The first book I read was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Since I enjoyed that book so much (seriously, go read it), I decided to give another Green book a try. So I picked up his second book, An Abundance of Katherines. It is the story of Colin, a (somewhat former) child prodigy who has a tendency to date girls named Katherine. He has dated nineteen of them, to be specific. When Katherine XIX dumps him (as all Katherines do), Colin falls into a depression. His not-a-terrorist Muslim friend, Hassan, suggests they take a summer road trip as a change of pace. The duo ends up in Gutshot, Tennessee, thanks to a roadside attraction featuring the grave of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This is where they meet Lindsey Lee Wells, the Archduke's tour guide, a paramedic in training, and overall celebrity in Gutshot. Colin, who is still extremely smart despite his not-a-genius-not-a-prodigy state of being, decides to become a genius by creating the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Probability. This theorem is supposed to predict a future relationship between any two people. Lindsey's mother gives the boys a job for the summer. They need to interview various residents of Gutshot to get an oral history of the town. Even though that sounds like a horribly boring job, the boys find much more than they ever expected.
I will start out saying that I didn't like this book nearly as much as I liked The Fault in Our Stars. That isn't to say this is a terrible book, though. I'm not a big fan of math so a lot of the information revolving around The Theorem went right over my head. While the math does take up quite a bit of space in the book, it isn't everything. The story of Colin finding himself and Hassan figuring out what to do with his life and Lindsey finding out who she is are all very interesting.
Actually, my biggest problem with the book was the footnotes. I read the book on my Kindle. So for every footnote, I would have to page forward to the end of the chapter to read it, then try to page back to where I was. Obviously, this wouldn't be such a huge problem if you were reading a paper version of the book but I'm not sure how many people read paper books anymore. My 11-year old daughter is the only person I know that still prefers paper books to electronic ones.
If you can look past the footnote issue, I'd recommend giving the book a try. It isn't for everyone. My daughter didn't like it as much as I did but she didn't dislike it either. It doesn't read quite as fast as TFiOS and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I liked it and I hope there's something in there for you too.
Sodastream
Over the past few days, 20 inches of snow fell on my little town. As a result, we have been stuck in the house for about two and a half days. Of course, we had to stock up on food, snacks, and drinks. I normally drink quite a bit of Coke. In an attempt to save a little bit of money, my husband and I bought a SodaStream a few months ago. And we love it. For those of you that don't know, SodaStream is a machine that lets you make your own carbonated beverages. We bought the Genesis soda maker, which came with the machine, a carbonator (a CO2 tank), a bottle, and a sample pack of flavors. Once you put the carbonator into the machine, you use the bottle (filled with regular water) to make carbonated water. Then you add in your favorite flavor. I am very fond of their Cola flavor. But SodaStream makes a lot of other flavors: Pink Grapefruit, Kool-Aid Cherry, Dr Pete (the Dr Pepper knock-off), Orange Soda...the list goes on. You can mess around with how much carbonation you add to water and how much flavoring you add to the carbonated water until you find a combination you like. (We prefer 5 "buzzes" of carbonation and a full cap of flavoring for the cola.)
However, you don't NEED to stick to SodaStream's flavors. There are some recipes out there for making your own soda syrup or you can buy them from someplace like Pittsburgh Soda Pop. We haven't tried them out yet but I am really looking forward to buying some new flavors, specifically the black cherry flavor.
I know I should stop drinking soda. But I think this is a 'healthy' alternative to store bought Coke or Pepsi. I love my SodaStream.
Mental Floss
As I've said before, I watch a lot of videos on YouTube. One of my favorite channels is Mental Floss. The show usually features author John Green talking about the topic of the week. I think my favorite is 48 Names for Things You Didn't Know Had Names. Once in awhile, someone other than Green hosts the show. For example, Hannah Hart from My Drunk Kitchen hosted a show about alcohol. Grace Helbig, formerly Daily Grace, has also hosted an episode.
While I'm not always fascinated by the topics on the Mental Floss channel, I am always entertained. This is a new way for useless information to squirrel away in my brain. I hope it finds a warm place in there. There is a lot of snow on the way.
Life Plans
For the past few days, I've been trying to figure out how to word this post. I don't know that I came up with a solution but I hope you'll understand my point anyway. This was never my life plan. Don't get my wrong - I am very happy with my current life and there isn't much I would change. But this was not how it was "supposed" to be.
Back in my high school and college days, performing was my life. In high school, I was an active member of the elite concert choir, all of the school plays, and I was in one of the first classes when the school rebooted drama class. When I went on to college, I majored in Theater Arts and was very active in the Theater department. (My mother insisted I major in something "responsible" so I ended up with a double major in Communications.) My goal was to get a job in theater, preferably backstage, even though I knew I wouldn't be swimming in gold or anything.
Things changed in my second year of college. While I still adored my time in the theater, there were things outside of school that drew my attention away from my studies and I ended up dropping out. Unfortunately, that pretty much signed the death certificate for my theater career. I did do some dinner theater before meeting my now-husband.
I fully admit that my life now is much more stable than it would have been if I had stayed in theater. However, it would be awesome if I could quit my crappy bookkeeping job and find a way to get back to the stage. Until then, I will remind myself how lucky I am, even if I can't do what I love.
The language of family
If you could wake up tomorrow and be fluent in any language you don’t currently speak, which would it be? Why? What’s the first thing you do with your new linguistic skills? Since the question specifies "language you don't currently speak," I am taking both Spanish and Japanese off the table. I am not, by any means, fluent in either language but I do speak enough that I could get around each country with few problems.
I would like to be fluent in German. My paternal grandfather's family was from Germany and, while I never knew my great-grandfather, it would be nice to know the language he spoke. Sadly, I don't know a lick of German. As for the first thing I would do? I'm not really sure. As far as I know, my immediate family is the end of the family tree. Maybe I could find some distant family in Germany and visit them, but I find that unlikely. I think I would like to learn the language just to have a connection to my ancestors, even if I never use it.
For a similar reason, I'd also like to learn Hawaiian. That is where my maternal grandfather is from. There aren't a lot of non-English speaking members of my family. These two are the closest I get to foreign languages. A great-grandfather I never met and a grandfather who ignored us for most of my life. That is why I don't actually sit down and learn the languages. I'd much rather spend my time working on my Japanese. At least that might be useful to me one day.
More on the way
Electricity is slowly returning to the region. My workplace got power back around 7:30PM last night. Sadly, that meant I had to drive into the office today. I was hoping to make it an entire week without having to drive in! And there is another, smaller, snowstorm on its way. Winter is fun. My daughter has her first regional competition for her middle school's TSA (Technology Student Association) club. She has two categories she is competing in. Her group category is Water Infrastructure and her second category is a Problem Solving team event with one other person. Meanwhile, both my husband and I will be judges for some of the high school categories. He is judging Video Game Development and I have Career Preparation. Since this is our first year, I'm not quite sure what to expect. I just hope the weather holds out long enough to get home safely after it is over.
Good Mythical Morning
Yes, the weather here still sucks. An ice storm rolled Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, which made everything much more awesome. A lot of places, including my workplace, has no power. Luckily, our house has not lost power. But it means that I haven't really left my house all week. The only time I left my house was when I had to take my daughter to dance class Tuesday night. (Before the ice came, of course.) It's a little good and a little bad.
On one hand, I haven't had to put up with my normal morning hour-long commute. But it's also pretty frustrating that I can't actually get any work done. I like working from home but this may be a little too much. Since my work phone is forwarded to my home phone, I'm still tied to my desk so there isn't much I can accomplish at home either. It's like the worst of both worlds.
At least I still have YouTube to keep me company. Here is Good Mythical Morning, one of my favorite YouTube shows.
The Fault in our Stars
Once again, I am working from home thanks to the snow. This week will be an awful weather week. At least I have some things to take my mind off the snow. One of these is the trailer for the movie version of "The Fault in our Stars." TFIOS is an awesome book by John Green. Both my daughter and I read the book and loved it. Shortly after my daughter finished it, the trailer arrived on YouTube. The movie premieres on June 6 and I can't wait to see it.
Here is the trailer. I highly recommend reading the book. It is a very quick read and it is so so good.