I may be a bit crazy.

Today I spent part of my afternoon volunteering at the library in Charlestown. It's a bit of a hike from my house, but it was nice to do a little service. I helped them set up for a children's event they were having this evening, that involved children getting to pick out two free books of their very own. It sounded pretty cool. I was expecting to be there for a couple hours and had planned my day accordingly, but there were several volunteers so it went quickly. Long story short, I ended up with the better part of 3 extra hours before I had to be at work.

I'm a little bit crazy. Before I left Charlestown I had decided that I was thirsty, but the library there doesn't have a drinking fountain, so I decided I'd walk over to the O'Connell branch of the Cambridge library and use their drinking fountain. It wasn't exactly on my way, but I didn't have any set plans. (Yes, I am aware that there were probably many other drinking fountains on my way--like at the mall I passed--but somehow that didn't occur to me at the time.) So I set off walking. In case any one is wondering, today the high was something like 20 F. And it definitely hadn't hit that high when I was out. And it is windy out--which means that the wind chill factor couldn't have been much above 0 F. Part of my walk took me across a nice long overpass. Yeah. Overpasses are especially windy. And therefore especially cold.

By the time I got to the library I thought my ears would fall off. Turns out that branch doesn't have a drinking fountain either. Luckily one of the librarians took pity on me and got me a cup so I could get water from the sink. yay. Then I traipsed back out in wind (after the other librarian questioned me on the warmth of my pea-coat--which by the way is plenty warm when it's not windy). This time I caught the bus figuring I'd just head down to work and find a book to read there till my shift.

But half way there I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to visit the quilting (/yarn) store I've been meaning to visit since I finished my first crochet project "in the round" (a story for another day). So, like the masochist I am I got off the bus a few stops early and walked to the quilt store a few blocks away. I did find some nice yarn. The ladies at the store were more than helpful and they both thought the hat pattern that I picked was a great one. Eventually I made it to the library. When I walked in, there just happened to be an express copy of the book I put on hold yesterday just waiting for me to check it out. yay. Now I don't have to wait the three or four days for the hold to come in. hehehe.  

Despite the cold, I do think it was a good adventure. Though somehow walking around in the cold and wind really takes it out of you. I think I'll sleep well tonight.

My Ideal Bookshelf

I feel like this year has started out pretty strong in terms of the books that I've read. I've been quite pleased with most of what I've read.

My Ideal Bookshelf was fascinating. It is a compilation of short (500 ish words) essays written by a variety of important/famous people (granted I'd only heard of a handful of them, but apparently they're famous). Each essay is about that person's "ideal bookshelf." They were asked to pick out the 10 or so books that would be on their perfect shelf. It's an interesting exercise if you think about it because your "ideal bookshelf" actually probably changes from year to year or month to month or day to day. The perfect bookshelf you might have made as a 12 year old is probably quite different from the one you make at 25 or 40 or 87. And they weren't all necessarily a person's favorite books, or even ones they'd read. The essay accompanied a painting of the bookshelf and made for a lovely spread.

It was interesting to see which books cropped up a number of times or who picked a book written by someone else included in this collection.

I'd probably classify the book as a coffee-table type book. It has lovely illustrations and there isn't any particular reason to read it cover to cover straight through. It would be very easy to pick up and read at random. 

I pulled a few interesting quotes from it:


"If a non-fiction book experienced a massive spike in popularity then the idea behind it becomes mainstream and then the book itself disappears." --Chuck Klosterman, pg. 110

"A room is not a room with out books." --Mina Nair, pg. 137

"It's important to leave enough space for other books, ones that don't always line up like iron filings. Let the shelf build itself." --Jonathan Zittrain, pg. 202

"Fashion is a way to inform others about who you are, or who you want to be, without ever opening your mouth." --Robert Verdi, pg. 186

And if my recommendation isn't good enough, there's an article from Fine Books and Collections. It does have a tiny mount of sales-pitching, but the middle part is a good description of the book.

Almond Cranberry Cookies

Happy MLK day! As a total aside to what this post is really about (cookies) I just wanted to wish you a happy holiday. I took an hour today and went in to Cambridge and participated in a service project at City Hall. They had a variety of activities going on (blanket/scarf making, emergency room kits for children, valentine's day cards for shut-ins, etc.) I met up with some other people in the ward and we made a good stack of valentine's day cards for elderly people in the community. It was a lot of fun. There is something exciting not only about serving, but especially about serving in your own community. It's a lot of fun, and I feel good for having served today.

Now, on to the cookies.

One day last week I was trying to come up with a dessert to take to a dinner. I wanted something fairly light and relatively healthy. Recently Janssen had posted this about her favorite healthy cookie and so while I was at the store I picked up some almond meal and decided to give these a shot. For whatever reason I really struggled to make these right and to follow the directions. First I miss read how much vanilla to put in, so I put in three times as much as I should have, luckily there weren't too many ingredients in there already and so I could dump out some of the vanilla. But then I had to add more water, since some of that dumped out too. And then I miss measured about three other ingredients, necessitating that I increase the whole recipe by about 50%. All told, I really am not sure how much of any ingredient ended up in my cookie dough. But, it turned out ok. The cookies were really quite delicious. They were sweet, but not overly so, and they tasted good, while also feeling healthy. I definitely will have to make these again. And next time I think I will make each cookie a little bigger, because I made them a little too small this time.

Flowers

Last weekend I took a load of clothes down to Goodwill and decided that I needed a new vase. Now, we have about half a dozen vases at our house so there really is no reason for me to need one, other than the fact that the bouquets I always buy are always too small for the large vases we have. So, while I was at Goodwill I looked around for a smaller vase. I found one I quite liked--except it was $4! Can you imagine? $4 at Goodwill?? I was astounded. But it was the only one I really liked and so I still paid it. sheesh. Well anyways, today I picked up some more flowers and they do look so nice in the smaller vase. I just love having flowers in my home.

An epidemic of mumbling

While I was home over Christmas I found this article that was cut out of the newspaper and floating around the kitchen counter. I stopped to read it one day, because it sounded interesting. It's about how to teach teens (and people in general) to speak clearly so that they can be understood and so that they don't mumble. I feel like this is a huge problem that is plaguing our society. In the old days people learned to speak in school and now days they don't. But being able to speak well is still a very important part in our society. How many times do you speak to people in the course of one day? And if you're like me how many times do you have to repeat yourself to make yourself understood? (albeit, part of that problem is probably a lack of listening too, but that's a problem for another day). Card suggests that if we simply slowed down we would speak more clearly. It isn't a race. And yet, how many of us feel the need to race through things that we are saying at the cost of clarity? Read the article, it's really very interesting.

First day of school

That time is once again upon us. Today is my first day of classes for the semester. I woke up this morning and there was a little bit of light in my room and I remember thinking that it couldn't possibly already be late enough to be light out and that if it was then I was late for work. Luckily that's why I have a clock, so that when I wake up at 4:30 in the morning and I can be comforted in the fact that it is indeed not time to get up. The light coming in my window was just light pollution from the fact that it was snowing. When I got up at a more humane hour I was pleasantly surprised to find it snowing outside and the world nicely blanketed in white. The morning commute wasn't too bad, though I'm glad I left myself a little extra time to get to work, I needed it. With the new semester comes a slight variation in my work schedule, since my class today is a night one. Hopefully classes this semester will be good.

Dinner for one (or two)

Back in November my ward hosted a Service Auction. Several of the committees in the ward banded together and put together a lovely dinner and silent auction. And many people in the ward (and the two other invited wards) contributed service items for the auction, myself included. I volunteered to cook dinner for someone--the catch was that it had to be on a weekend, since I work weeknights. At length, today I finally prepared this dinner for one of my good friends who won my service item. And since we're pretty good friends her dinner for one really turned into dinner for two, since she came over to the house and enjoyed a pleasant evening with me.

I spent quite a while trying to work out the menu and waffling back and forth on what to serve. They all happened to be new recipes (yeah, I know you're not supposed to use guests--and paying ones at that--as guinea pigs, but what can I say?). I got a couple marvelous vegetarian cookbooks over Christmas and I was just dying to try out some new recipes. More on those later.

So I got this far in writing this post last Friday. My plan had been to take a couple pictures and then post it that night. But you know how good I am at taking pictures. Despite the lack of photo-documentation my dinner was a success. I ended up making a frittata from my Vegetarian Kids' Cookbook, and an apple dessert pizza. They were both pretty delicious. In fact, I'm looking forward to making the frittata again this week. It featured potatoes, peas, and broccoli--three of my favorite vegetables. mmmm, broccoli.

The Center for Adult Education

Back in the fall I decided that I wanted to take some kind of dance class for fun. I'd heard of the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and knew that they offered all kinds of classes. After looking through their catalog I decided that I wanted to take a tap dancing class. It just sounded like it'd be a nice change of pace from my regular school work. While the classes are quite reasonably priced I wasn't sure if I could make it work in my budget. And then one day before I made a decision about the class it got made for me. I had to get some of the fluids in my car flushed and it cost more than I anticipated, thus eating up any funds for the class. So I set aside that plan for another semester.

Jump forward to December. I decided that the tap class would be perfect for winter because it is an added source of exercise (which I find more difficult to get enough of in the cold weather). This time I jumped on it, and registered for the class and brought my tap shoes back with me from my parent's house. It was a good thing I didn't wait to long to register. A few days later the battery in my car died. If I hadn't already paid for the class I probably wouldn't have gotten to take it this semester either.

So, today it began. It was a lot of fun. There are about a dozen other people in my class, and it was just a lot of fun to spend an hour today tap dancing. Hopefully it will continue so.