just say no

I've decided that resolutions are dumb. Mostly, they just make me feel bad about myself. Of course there are things I want to work on. I just don't think I need to make resolutions about them this year. So I'm just saying no to resolutions in 2013.

2012 reads

2012 was an ok year in books. I wasn't that excited about many of those I read, and as per usu I didn't make enough time to read. So I'm not even all that inspired to document. But as I've done in 2011 and 2010, I want to continue to blog the books I've read. Those that are bold are favorites. In order of appearance:

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck
Monster, Walter Dean Myers, a reread
Sarah's Key, Tatiana de Rosney
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Stolen: A Letter to my Captor, Lucy Christopher
Hero, Perry Moore
Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter, George Kuh
Cut, Patricia McCormick
Wonderstruck, Brian Selznick
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros, a reread
American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang
Tangerine, Edward Bloor, a reread
The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo
Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Parker Palmer
The Magician King, Lev Grossman
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell
Inside Out and Back Again, Thanhha Lai
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
The Maze Runner, James Dashner
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, Erik Larson
Little Bee, Chris Cleave
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
Everyday Anti-Racism: Getting Real About Race in School, Mica Pollock
Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys
Love Drugged, James Klise
Silhouette of a Sparrow, Molly Beth Giffin
This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin
Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, Ruth Reichl
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
Wonder, R.J. Palacio
Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2), Ken Follett
The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin
The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, G. Neri
Morning Girl, Michael Dorris
The Round House, Louise Erdrich

More than 2010 but fewer than last year. Almost all of the books I've made favorites are YA titles. I do love a good YA novel.

Here's to more reading in 2013, and here's hoping there are more favorites on the 2013 list!

ho ho ho

I have been a bit obsessive with the running team, I admit. But it's just been so much fun. Take last weekend, we had the 2nd annual Ugly Sweater Egg Nog Schlogg around Lake Calhoun. 

At every stop, we were required to do a shot of egg nog.

Stop 1: Holiday trivia 

We were asked a holiday themed trivia question. If you got it right, continue running.  If you got it wrong, you had to complete a loop back on the course as a penalty. My question: what kind of pajamas does Ralphie get for Christmas? Answer: pink footie bunny pajamas - I got it right.

Stop 2: Advent calendar of death 

We picked a number from the basket that corresponds to one on the Advent calendar, and had to do whatever fun activity was assigned to the number.  Activities included jumping jacks, burpees, additional shots of egg nog, etc.  I had to do burpees.

Stop 3: Mystery Xmas Song.  

From a hat, we picked a Christmas song, and were required to sing the song the remainder of the run...the louder the better!

It was raining and kinda miserable, but who wouldn't have fun doing this?

 

I'm not crazy.

In 2004, my book club decided to read classics that we hadn't read in high school. Or maybe we had read and couldn't remember them. We were on A Farewell to Arms, and as it turns out, I had a vacation the week before book club. So Hemingway came to Mexico with me.

I really hated that book. When I got to the end, I threw it across the room. I don't mean figuratively; I actually threw it across the room. Thunk.

Fast forward to tonight, when I went to see "Silver Linings Playbook" with my sister. In an early scene, Bradley Cooper's character, Pat, dealing with bipolar disorder, is reading A Farewell to Arms in order to win back his wife. He'd just been released from a psychiatric hospital, and was trying to find ways to prove himself. When he finished the book, he threw it so hard that it broke a window and landed on the front lawn.

Clearly, this is a normal response to that book, given that it was written into a movie. Right?!?

one reason I run

I certainly didn't "earn" this breakfast with my slow 3 miles around Lake of the Isles this morning. And frankly, it is near impossible to run enough miles to actually balance out this caloric bomb. But it was certainly worth it this freezing Friday morning to meet up with friends and enjoy some puppy dog tails.

Frosting. Yum.

efficiency

I woke up this morning having zero Christmas presents bought. I was at work early to put in some hours in the office and then headed out to shop early afternoon. It's now 9 pm and I'm done shopping and everything is wrapped. Some major credit card damage was done in those few hours, but I'm glad to be ready for the holiday. Now if only those last finals would grade themselves...

without words

I can't stop thinking about the tragic incident in Connecticut, grieving for those families, the school, the community. I spent yesterday and most of today remembering the many times I thought through procedures in the event of a emergency with my students - where we'd hide, what I could do to keep them safe. I hate that we live in a world where the most innocent of us all were taken from this world so horrifically.

I was asked by our PR person at the university to be interviewed on the news last night to give advice to parents on how to talk to children about the events from Friday morning. I told her I was completely unprepared to give that kind of advice. I could barely stop crying myself, and it is so far outside my expertise, I wouldn't have anything to truly help a parent know how to support children in this time of tragedy. I know how I might have tried to talk about it with fifth graders, as I did after Columbine and 911 and Red Lake. But I was without words in this instance.

winter running

After it took me 1.5 hours to shovel myself out this morning and twice as long as normal to get to work, I'm probably already sick of the snow. But I wasn't yesterday on the first real snowy run of the season.

up and down, around and around

The running team had out first hill workout of the season today. There some new snow on the ground and the sidewalks were slick. It was hard, but it felt great. I'm still slower than I want to be, though I'm trying to be patient about that, but it was super fun to be doing a real workout this morning. Just in time, too, because 4 weeks from right now, I'll be toasting completing my first Ragnar. After a tough summer and fall, I'm starting to feel like myself again.

it's beginning to look...

This year, I put Christmas lights up on the front of my house for the first time. I have been listening to Christmas carols as I grade. I am not quite in the spirit of the holidays, but this snow just might help.

til death

Last week I got to the work conference a day before most of the people I knew were going to get there. I called room service, but the wait was going to be an hour and a half for dinner, so I decided to head down one of the hotel restaurants. I ate at the bar, rather than taking up a table, and brought my conference book to peruse while I was waiting for my dinner. And as armor against small talk with others at the bar.

It didn't work. A guy sat next to me and though I tried hard to look busy, eventually elbowed me and asked what the book was all about, why we were all here. We ended up talking for a half hour or so; he was nice, talked about work and mentioned his wife and children. When I paid my bill and got up to leave, he said he'd walk out with me. When we got to the elevators, he put his arm around me and started rubbing/tickling my back and said, "I'm going to take a chance and ask you up to my room." I said no, I wasn't interested. He responded, "Yes you are. You know you want to." And I said, no, actually, I'm not. I don't want to. And by then I got off the elevator and walked the other direction from my actual room, just in case he got out.

I just kept thinking about his poor wife. I don't know their situation at all, but I sure know that I wouldn't want my husband trying to get strangers into his hotel room when he was traveling for work.

I have had many instances of married men hitting on me or going out with me (initially pretending to be single). I worked with a married guy that made several serious passes at me. I was so angry after this latest ridiculousness that I started to think about what it is about me that might lead this to happen many times. I worry that I seem desperate and easy. I'm not, but maybe I project that?

This is really frustrating. I don't need more evidence that there are a lot of losers out there. Why is it that I want a relationship again?