10/101 - Read one (auto)biography every six months

I have read the following autobiographies to fulfill item #10 of my 101 things.

1) Actually, the first one I don't even remember. I don't remember the title, and I don't remember who it was about. But it was funny.

2) Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman.

3) Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery by Russell Freedman.

I actually read the Lincoln biography last night. It's a children's book. Yep, that's how I roll. I'm really loving the Eleanor Roosevelt book by Freedman (also a children's book), so I might end up reading another biography or autobiography on her life. That's actually why I decided to read the Freedman books. They were short, so if I found someone I was particularly interested in through reading his books, I could go find some more in-depth materials.

That's it for now! All in all I will be reading 6 (auto)biographies before the end of the challenge.

Test Kitchen/Dinner Group

To help me resolve my little recipe problem, I decided to start a weekly dinner group/test kitchen combo.

Basically, I'm going to make at least one recipe from my (ahem) archives each Thursday and invite all of my Orem/Provo peeps for dinner every week.

I was thinking I would send out a weekly email with the plan for the main dish, a side-dish sign-up list with a couple of slots, and then let everyone else know to bring $3-$8 to help pay for ingredients, depending on how exotique the ingredients are. (So... if it's lobster, everyone brings $8-ish. If it's tortilla soup everyone brings $3.)

What do you think? Is it tacky to ask people to bring money? Should I just have them bring ingredients? If it were you, what would you prefer?

Would you participate in something like this if someone else was hosting?

Sibling Inspiration: Amy

Amy has started running.

I used to love running, but not so much anymore.

I want to love running again. Come to find out I have not only diabetes in my family history, but a history of heart attacks at an early age.

For months I have had this couch-to-5K running plan saved in my external hard drive and eventually posted on my wall.

So today I put each week's workouts on a 4x6 index card so I can easily prop up an outline of my workout on the treadmill at the gym.

It's a nine-week program, and I'll be running indoors only until the spring. (I don't do inversions.)

The idea is to not only lose weight, but to increase my health altogether and have an established running habit before I (potentially) move away to graduate school.

Wish me luck. Join me if you'd like. It will do your heart good. (Mine, too, since I'll know I'm not doing this alone.)


Another goal I've set for myself that's inspired by Ames: Journal keeping. I'm only good at it when it's require for getting good grades in school. Lame. Amy is great at it. So, I'm going to buy myself a new little journal that I can carry with me wherever I go and see what happens.

Get Cooking!

I got "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman. I think she was the one who said she learned to cook by just cooking her way through his book, and it inspired me.

Not only am I going to learn how to cook "everything," but I am also going to become a creative cook and ingredient-combining guru with the Ingredient Bible, which I bought for myself because it's my birthday.

So, if you would like to be a guinea pig, let me know and I'll invite you over for dinner, lunch, breakfast, or brunch.

L'embarras du choix

At a ward activity with my church in Paris, there was a potluck with some of the most delicious-looking foods I've ever seen.

As I stood before the buffet-style setup trying to decide where to start, a member of the bishopric came up beside me with the same "Where do I start?" look of hesitation on his face.

"Ahh..." he says, "L'embarras du choix." Roughly translated, that conveys the idea of "overwhelmed by my options" or "spoilt for choice."

And that's the perfect description of my life right now. Really, where do I start?

I've been thinking a lot about graduate school, but for the life of me I can't settle on one program over another. It's kind of distressing, mostly because the deadlines are all coming up soon, and I'll need to get cracking on the GRE for some of the applications.

I feel pulled in several different directions. These are the programs I'm thinking of applying to:

-French studies
-French Teaching
-Language Acquisition
-TESOL
-MPA
-Literacy Education

If I did either of the last two, I would want to do both and end up working for a non-profit with a focus on literacy education (either K-12 or adult ed). But I also feel like I should work in that field for at least a year or two to determine whether that's something I would want to do as a full-time career.

I think with French Studies or French Teaching it's almost a no-brainer that I at least apply, but the catch with that is I don't think I would want to teach secondary, so I would have to also do a doctorate. Yowza. I'm 28. You do the math.

They're all sort of related, having to do with literacy, teaching, and language... but they're all different enough that they don't really overlap. Except maybe Language Acquisition and TESOL. Those probably have some significant overlap in the theories I would study.

So, I'm not gonna lie... I think I would love them all. I'm not really making salary a part of the decision, because choosing a career based on how much I would make is a recipe for disaster (based on previous experience).

That's all. Just needed to get it off my chest.

More Earrings

In the past couple of months I've started making earrings. Sometimes I make something because I can't find what I want in stores, and sometimes it's just a matter of wanting to do something creative that is also practical. It's also a cheaper way to feed my addiction.

Getting to the point: I gave earrings to all the girls in my family, as well as my friends, for Christmas.

Here are some of the earrings I've made in the past little while:

Hope you like them!

Flashback: Missionary memories

When I was 21, I left to serve a mission for my church.

I didn't have a digital camera on my mission, so I just recently had all of my negatives from that 18-month period scanned onto CDs. Going through them brought up some great memories. Two of which I will share with you today. They're not very specific, and they're not long, so don't be afraid.

Memory 1: In my last area (Spencerport, NY), while at a dinner appointment with an older couple, the husband gave me this awesome hat. I'm sure you can guess why. Isn't is a great hat? I wish I could say I still had it, but it probably didn't make the cut to come back in my two suitcases. It's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate, even as a missionary. I'm pretty sure I mailed two or three boxes home, too!

Also notice my super-classy plastic watch.

Memory 2:

In my second area (Fairport, NY), I was put in a companionship with two other sisters, both of whom had been called specifically to serve at the historic sites in Palmyra and the surrounding area.

This is a picture of me at the E. B. Grandin building in Palmyra. This was one of my favorite times on my mission because I got to spend the entire day bearing my testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's role as a prophet of God. Most days I spent tracting, knocking on doors, hoping someone would take just a moment to listen. This was a nice change of pace for just a few weeks.

Many of you already know...

... that I'm a bit obsessed with earrings.

Well, a week or so ago I counted my earrings, just out of curiosity. I discovered that I had over 175 pairs on my earring storage/display racks, and if I'm going to be honest, I tend to wear the same 20 or 30 pair over and over, if that.

So--shallow as it may seem--I decided that I would challenge myself to wear every single pair of earrings I own once before I can wear any of them a second time. I'm also not allowing myself to wear any newly-purchased earrings until I've gone through the existing stash.

Some of you may care, some of you may not. But I started a blog about it so I wouldn't end up posting them all here. It's called the Earring Appreciation Project, and it's all about earrings: the ones I own and wear, the ones I wish I could afford but can't, and the ones I discover in different places (on people, online... wherever).

If you're interested, hop over and take a look. If you're not interested, feel free to mock me. (I'll only be somewhat offended.)

Blogger is annoying

and won't publish my posts when I tell it to. So, I'm not going to bother reporting on the summer in chronological order. When I find pictures, I'm posting them. I know the dates are irrelevant to you, anyway.

Cheers.

I've been home

from Paris for as long as I was there. It seems like it was a really long time ago and it's so far removed from my daily life now.

So... I'm getting ready to post about some of the things I've done since I've been home. Some you've already seen. Others... not so much.

Later.