Chasing Cars

Sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to.



I'm still learning that it's for the best...

I Want One Too!

Amanda had little baby Aidan today! He's 7lbs 3oz and is 20 inches long. That's all the information I have right now plus a picture. He is so cute! I really wish I was in Virginia right now!

Dealing with Dragons

Dealing with Dragons is a young adult novel by Patricia C. Wrede. It puts a spin on the everyday fairytale, though it is filled with magic, dragons, princes, princesses, witches, and wizards.

The basis of the book is an anti-princess, Cimorene, who does not look or act like a proper princess should. To begin with she has long dark hair instead of blond hair and she would rather learn magic and sword fighting than proper etiquette or needle point. When the King and Queen are at their absolute wits end they decide to marry her off to Prince Thenadril. Cimorene is horrified at this thought and thus decides she must do something. Thanks to a frog she is given the idea to become a dragon's princess, which is actually a highly respectable position.

After following the frog's explicit instructions she meets Kazul who agrees to take her on as her princess. Cimorene soon finds herself immersed in cooking, cleaning, cataloging the library, and organizing the treasure rooms. She loves it all. Then the princes begin showing up.

Cimorene does her best to politely tell the princes she does not in fact need rescuing, but they find this odd and not at all "proper". This is when the real trouble begins and with the help of a witch she decides to hang a sign to deter the princes. While on her way to hang the sign far enough away from the caves she runs into a wizard which is a very odd occurrence as they are not allowed in dragon territory.

From there the reader is caught up in a spellbinding adventure and mystery as Cimorene and Kazul try to figure out what it is the wizards are after and if one of the dragons is really in cahoots with the wizards. This book was a quick read and I highly recommend it not only for teens, but adults as well. The dialogue is witty and humorous and Cimorene is like no other princess. It is a great escape from the usual fairytale.

And at the start of the day are you still the same as yesterday?

I'm keeping up the music from last week because I'm in love with Grey's Anatomy and I love the soundtrack so much, but there is a new quote up for this week. Again sorry about it being late...

Looking for Rainbows

This weekend was mother's weekend. It was difficult. Maybe one of the hardest times I've had here besides my birthday. Usually it's easy to know that I'm alone out here. I don't dwell on it, don't think about it. But there are those times when someone in class will mention having discussed something with their mom or asked their dad a question and in that very moment I feel utterly alone. With everyone having their mom here this weekend I felt like that constantly, which made me angry, which made me unpleasant to be around. So today I had a meeting with the Bishop because sometimes you just need someone to tell you you're doing okay and you'll get through it.

I spent most of the day up in apartment 10. We had a blast. Kristen and I did some studying and we took a nap. Then Kristen and Miriam made corn chowder and biscuits from scratch. After that we started singing and recording for the CD I'm making as a Christmas present to a few people.

Now I'm home in apartment 1 and I'm debating which book to begin reading on the list below. I think I'll start with Dealing With Dragons because I need to read it for class anyway. I read it when I was a freshman in high school and loved the series. It's such a fantastic book.

Harvard's Top 100

I'm going to read all of these...at some point. Even the ones I've already read I'm going to reread them. I think I'll shoot for one a month and then post about it. Maybe this will be like my onw little book review blog.

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn
The Wind Up Bird Chronicles - Haruki Murakami
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1984 - George Orwell
Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
On the Road - Kerouac
Alice in Wonderland - Carrol
Brothers Karamozov - Dostoevsky
The Age of Innocence - Wharton
Don Quixote - Cervantes
Perfume - Suskind
Ulysses - Joyce
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
Cry the Beloved Country - Paton
Dracula - Stoker
The Eagles Die - Marek
Emotionally Weird - Atkinson
The Handmaid's Tale - Atwood
Infinite Jest - Wallace
Kitchen - Yoshimoto
London Fields - Amis
Moise and the World of Reason - Williams
Movie Wars - Rosenbaum
Paradise Lost - Milton
Persuasion - Austen
Tortilla Curtain - Boyle
Visions of Excess - Bataille
Where the Wild Things Are - Sendak
Wild Sheep Chase - Murakami
Beloved - Morrison
Counterfeiters - Gide
The Bell Jar - Plath
Blind Owl - Hedayat
Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe
The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
Dealing With Dragons - Wrede
The Earthsea Trilogy - Le Guin
The Ecology of Fear - Davis
Franny and Zooey - Salinger
History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents - Alvarez
Kabuki: Circle of Blood - Mack & Jiang
Of Human Bondage - Maugham
The Satanic Verses - Rushdie
The Sheltering Sky - Bowles
Tristam Shandy - Sterne
Well of Loneliness - Hall
Wicked Pavilion - Powell
Collected Stories of V.S. Pritchett
War and Peace - Tolstoy
Babel 17 - Delany
Dora - Freud
Empire Falls - Russo
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Hemingway
Girl in Landscape - Letham
Goodbye to All That - Graves
Ham on Rye - Bukowski
Mao II - Delillo
Random Family - Leblanc
Revolutionary Road - Yates
The Stranger - Camus
Humboldt's Gift - Bellow
White Noise - Delillo
Atlas Shrugged - Rand
Bastard Out of Carolina - Allison
Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills - Bukowski
Delta of Venus - Nin
Fast Food Nation - Schlosser
Ficciones - Borges
Go Ask Alice - Anonymous
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Adams
Iliad - Homer
On Photography - Sontag
Republic - Plato
Shockproof Sydney Skate Meaker
Society of the Spectacle - Debord
Strangers in Paradise - Moore
The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
A Wrinkle In Time - L'Engle
Dubliners - Joyce
The Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut
No Logo - Klein
Aeneid - Virgil
Ariel - Plath
Charlotte's Web - White
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute - Paley
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - McCullers
Henry VIII - Shakespeare
I, Claudius - Graves
The Lost Continent - Bryson
Master and Margarita - Bulgakov

Music and Quote

Yes it's a day or so late but I put up this week's quote and playlist. This week's playlist comes from Grey's Anatomy. It's the first soundtrack that was released for the show. There's only one song missing and it's Wait by Get Set Go. Enjoy and hope everyone has a great week.

Is it considered behind in life or can I just say I'm late?

I thought yesterday was busy, but today is proving to be even more so. Though it might be okay because today starts later than any other. I have my Child Development class at 11:30 and then English Academic Society and then French and then working at the Evening with President Clark. I'm conducting the music tonight and I am terrified. I don't do so well in front of people, lots of people. I practiced for quite some time last night with Nicole. She's the best for being so patient with me. It probably doesn't help that I can't read music haha.

I have to be all dressed up for tonight, Sunday best and all. That means I will be wearing a skirt and pantyhose all day today. Oh the joys of being Mormon :)

All of this activity today means I can't get anything done that I had planned on getting done. I need to go to the post office and mail the check to my little brother for his fundraiser and Joey's birthday card (his birthday was last Wednesday by the way) and I'm way behind on making fudge, which means I probably won't be able to send it to anyone until Monday. I also want to start working on the package we're going to be sending Andy and the package I want to send the missionaries in Virginia. I'm still working on how to get their address.

Also I've only read 10 out of 25 books for my Young Adult Lit class so I need to read A LOT this weekend so I'm nnt rushing to do it at the last minute. I've read the book I'm teaching to the class and the book I'm doing for the book talk and I just finished the book I'm doing my rationale report on. All I need to do is find two books to do for my classical bridge essay. A classical bridge is when i take a calssic book that it's hard for teenagers to connect with (ie. Scarlet Letter, Hamlet, Hounds of the Baskervilles) and pick a current yound adult book that will get them interested in reading the classic. I did this back at Longwood with Hamlet and Harry Potter, but for this paper I really want to use War and Peace or maybe even The Scarlet Letter, but I'm having trouble thinking of current young adult books that would help them get interested in the story. Any suggestions would be awesome.

Response to [in]securities posted by sylvs

its time to challenge the status quo
because we want and
because we can
what are your former [in]securities?

- I have an eating disorder and I never feel pretty enough, but I'm learning skinny doesn't equal pretty.

- I'm back in college after three years away and I feel so behind, but I know I have it in me to finish.

- I never feel good enough because I'm a convert and I experienced a lot of the bad things in life, but I'm not that person anymore and I wouldn't trade my past for anything.

- I haven't had a home since my granny died, but then I found Katrina and then I found BYU-I.

- I have tattoos to cover scars that I try to forget are there, but they remind me of what I will never become.

- I don't get close to people because I learned early on everyone I love dies, but then again everyone dies at some point.