Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Paper and pens

Today after work I had the pleasure of roaming through Barnes and Noble. When I was little I hated how it smelled. I thought it smelled so bad. I'd be gagging as we walked through the door. My mom didn't know what I was complaining about. Devonna didn't know what I was talking about. I still can slightly smell it when I first enter the door, but it's not nearly as powerful as it was when I was a child. Nor do I gag.

I had a couple of gift cards to spend/finish off from graduation and my birthday so I spent a short bit deciding what I wanted. I already knew that I wanted to get a journal for our Europe trip there and was hoping that they had one that I liked. And they did! It's a really nice one that has snaps so that it closes and comes with a pencil with a place held for it (I will be replacing this with a black felt pen shortly). It's made out of fine Italian leather. It's soo pretty.

I love getting new notebooks and journals. The problem is that I don't really write enough. I wrote almost every day while I was in Joshua, but since then I have barely filled half of a journal. Writing takes a long time. And I used to do it before bed, when I was in a mood, with my iPod buds in my ears as my pensive mood took over. Now that I'm married, that's hard to do. My urges to write (more than what I put in this blog), usually accompany my urges to be alone, or occur in loneliness. That doesn't happen much now. But I still love looking at journals and still want to buy them. Then I realize that it takes me a while to fill and it's not worth the money.

The other book that I got was a slow cooker recipe book. Our cookbook has a section for slow cookers, but it's limited. And everything has onions or mushrooms in it (a problem for Doug). So I found a "Slow Cooker Bible" with everything from appetizers, poultry, vegetable side dishes, soups, and desserts. I'm excited to use our slow cooker as fall starts. The few meals that I made last year were really good. I almost bought another book called "The Book Thief" (has anyone read it? Is it good?), but then realized that 1) I was out of gift card money and 2) Library's are still in existence and are much cheaper. Although I need to get a new library card because I accidentally put mine in the throw away pile when I was clearing off our dresser. Oops.

We put in our 30 day notice today with our apartment complex. The woman didn't seem the least bit surprised that it was because of the rent increase. When we told her that it had been $1199 when we moved in she was shocked. Which is weird because a lot of places are that price still. So that's done. Now to start the packing process, both of our apartment and for Europe.

I started my next book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm almost at page 100, and that's how long I give books to catch my attention. This one just about has I think. It's different than I thought it would be. And it's translated from Swedish, so some of the language is a little off and the names are hard for me to read without my mind wanting to stop and really sound them out (for the 20th time). Like the main character's name is Mikael Blomkvist. My mind does not like three consonants together. And I'm trying to figure out if it's supposed to be Michael or Mick-ale (cause I've heard that in European movies of the pronunciation of our Michael). I don't think I've even reached the plot point yet really though. I don't read the back of the book if it's a well-known book like this one is because it gives away too much information. If it's a #1 New York Times Bestseller and has spent 965 days in the top 100 for Kindle books...I don't need to know the story. Enough people have said that it's at least worth reading. So we shall see. I'm not building it up too much in my mind because it also only has 3.7 stars out of 5...

I should go to bed now because I have a couple of busy days ahead of me, but my Pandora station is treating me well so it's hard to shut it off. It keeps playing good songs (right now is an instrumental of Such Great Heights by the Postal Service).

No comments: