Reading has always been my go to way to unwind. In 2010, I read 139 books (I will probably finish a few more before the year ends). I’ve seen posts from other Xangans where they list all of the books that they have read this year. Frankly, I’m too lazy to type all of that out. I do; however, belong to Goodreads where I can list all of the books that I’ve read and want to read with ease. So if you are interested, here’s the link to my Goodreads site (feel free to add me!):

Click me! Click me! Click me!

How many books have you read this year?

I’m in love with our new place and our new neighborhood. Last night, I started walking home but decided to walk a little further to pop into the local used book store (which is amazing, btw) to see if I could find a copy of War and Peace. It’s one of my projects for next year. I’m planning to read a chapter a night in 2011. Alas, there was no copy of War and Peace to be found but that’s nothing that Amazon can’t rectify. Afterwards, I picked up an empanada for dinner. Life is good.

I love that I can walk to a bookstore. I love that everything is still noisy and there’s people still outside after work. In my suburban place, most people got out of their cars after driving home from work and shut themselves in for the night. The new place is good for me; it’s hard to feel alone here. I’m thankful.

We’ll be heading up to PA for Thanksgiving and then stopping at my parents’ house to hang out over the weekend. It’ll be nice to have some time off with friends and family, a mini-vacation if you will.

Hope your holiday is wonderful!

Last night, I was walking home and passed a mother and her son who must have been probably 5 or 6 I’m guessing. This conversation illustrates exactly why I love little kids and think they’re hilarious.

Kid: I was playing with Alejandro today. We played soccer.
Mom: Wait, I thought you weren’t friends with him anymore because he was mean to you.
Kid: We won by three goals and he was on my team and I scored all the goals and he was like “Miles, I love you. You’re great and you scored all the goals. Scored ALL the GOALLLs.” Mom, I scored all the goals! He was like “you scored all the goals” and just kept hugging me.
Mom: So I guess you’re good friends now?
Kid: Yeah, the best.
Mom: Okay, then.

What if it only took scoring a few goals to change enemies into friends? Wouldn’t it be nice…

… I’m just thinking out loud.

You know, I often wonder about what would happened if you made a small change. How big of change would you need to change the entire course of your life? Is it a left turn versus a right turn? Different places? Different turns? Where is that line where everything changes? Do you know that now? I can’t help but wondering…

I’ve been hit in a weird way this week. It could have been 10 years, almost half a short lifetime. Such an immense change. I don’t know what’s done it. The onset of winter? Recent shakeups? November (it was a good month once, remember)? Slow or fast progression of life in general? Life is good right now; I don’t know why I’m getting pulled back this way.

I’m in the middle of listening to the White Album. It fits the mood just right now. Did you know that you’re supposed to listen to the songs in an album in order? Itunes may have ruined that for most of us.

I’m feeling adrift and not nailed down. Maybe that’s what’s pushing me back to… well you know where I’m at right now.

We’re officially moved! I can’t wait to get settled. Last time we moved, we did it ourselves and it wasn’t really that much fun and was quite tedious so this time, we decided to hire movers since we only had the weekend to get everything done. The movers we got were worth every single penny. They showed up early and by about 12:30pm were already pulling away from our new place. We spent a lot of time getting unpacked on Saturday and things are really starting to come together. I’m hopeful that by the end of the week, we should be pretty well settled.

I love the new place. We have the sounds of the city right outside our window and our place is quite cozy. It actually has character and you can tell that someone really took the time to think about what it would be like to live in the space and added a lot of nice touches, architectural and otherwise. We’re in walking distance to a lot of the awesome things that this city has to offer, which is mind blowing. I am now just a 5-7 minute walk from the metro.  I think it’s going to be a good place to call home for awhile.

How was your weekend?

By now, many of you have probably heard about the pedophile book that Amazon was selling (it has since been pulled from sale). I’m struggling with this a little bit. On one hand, pedophilia is pretty disturbing to me and most definitely a crime and should not be glorified in any way. On the other hand, as a anti-censorship lover and first amendment supporter, I’m not sure I agree with the book being pulled. I’m very much of the school of thought that if you are offended by some sort of media be it a book, tv show, magazine, video, just don’t read it, look at it, etc.

I think that censorship when it comes to books can be a slippery slope. People try to get all sorts of books banned because they don’t agree with what they have to say. In some cases, I believe that their fears are unfounded (such as in the case of the Harry Potter books and them apparently teaching witchcraft or being un-Christian). In other cases, I can see why people would be offended (such as in the case of books like Mein Kampf).

In this specific case, I see why people are offended and I, myself, am a little creeped out that someone would write a book about this subject. But should it really not be sold? My personal jury is still out on that one. I have been trying to think of a good analogy of what this particular book could be compared to and the best thing that I could come up with is true crime non-fiction books, although admittedly this is not a perfect analogy. These are published on a pretty regular basis and many people read these books but does their being sold mean that crime is okay?

With the advent of eReaders like the Kindle, it has become much easier for people to self-publish, which I think can be a good thing. However, Amazon does not regulate what people want to self-publish. I think if they did so, it would take a crazy amount of time for them to do so which could hurt independent authors. I believe we even have a few people on Xanga that have self-published through Amazon. I think it would be a loss to limit self-publishing.

What do you all think?

I got some bad news last night. My mom’s best friend who is suffering from pancreatic cancer has taken a turn for the worse. Hospice thinks that she may have had a stroke and she can’t really move now and can’t eat. It’s so scary.

Pancreatic cancer is such an evil disease. A., my mom’s friend, has been fighting it for three years and two months, which if you know anything about pancreatic cancer, that’s pretty darn amazing. Usually pancreatic cancer takes people fairly quickly within a matter of months. It can be very difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to treat.

When you watch someone slowly fade away, all you wish for is for them to find some relief at the end, some calmness, some dignity even. That’s all I’m praying for. She has fought such a big battle. Up until a few months ago, she was even crewing in the river a few days a week. When I think of what being a strong person means, she’s who I think of. I’m not sure that I could be so strong or so brave if I were the one going through this.

I have a lot of thoughts running through my head right now. I pretty much cried all last night. I don’t know what I was hoping for; a miracle perhaps. I’m afraid of how this is going to affect my mom. She lost her mother (my dear, dear grandmother) to pancreatic cancer a few years ago and she has been by A.’s side for a lot of her fight. You do that when you love someone but my mom has been pretty brave about it.

I told the Architect that it also made me worried about when our parents start going. I don’t even know how I’m going to handle that. A. is only a few years older than my parents (Dad will be 50 in December, Mom has a few more years until 50). The Architect’s parents are in their 60s. I know I can’t worry about this without driving myself crazy so I just try not to think about it too much.

I just feel helpless. I’m not good in situations where I feel like I don’t have a whole lot of control. This is definitely one of those times. If you are so inclined, please pray or at least send good thoughts out for A. and her family. They could certainly use them.

Some of you may know that I worked at a coffee place in college. It is still by far one of my very favorite jobs (who could complain about getting free coffee really?). One thing we were semi-encouraged to do was to learn some of our regular customers’ regular drinks. We were all pretty decent at it. The coffee place had big windows in front so when we saw certain customers coming towards the door, we would call out their drink so whoever was in charge of making drinks that day could start making the drink. It worked out pretty well for us. The customers were happy because we were showing that we cared enough to remember their favorite drinks (and that goes a long way in the coffee industry).

Now I’m on the other side of the espresso machine, drinking copious amounts of coffee before I head into work. I’m in the Sbux a few days a week at about the same time so I’ve become a familiar face to some of the baristas; however my drink choice is still an enigma to them.

One barista in particular has taken an interest in my drink choice. You see, I change favorites regularly. Somedays I want a fancy latte, somedays an Americano, somedays iced coffee. I’m apparently very abnormal, which is what the barista tells me at least once a week.

Are most of you creatures of habit or do you like to change it up a little?

(PS The whole new Kings of Leon cd is amazing but the song, Pyro, is really, really super amazing)

Between the Rally for Sanity/Fear and the Marine Corps Marathon, there was a lot going on in our fair city this weekend. I don’t have a lot of patience for tourists (hey, I’m crotchety) so it was time for an adventure outside of the city. For the past several Octobers, the Architect and I have escaped from the city with a group of friends.

The Architect’s family owns an awesome cabin in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. It’s so peaceful. It’s a good place to get away and best of all, we can get up there in about 2-3 hours. You can actually see stars out there (tis a foreign concept to us DC-ers).

 The cabin always makes for a good weekend filled with good people, good music, good food and lots of sleep, sweet, sweet sleep. It’s a lot of visiting and catching up and a lot of watching the guys play with fire and reverting back to their high school mentalities (always entertaining).

The weather finally felt fall like this weekend. It was perfect for sitting around the campfire and telling lots of stories and laughing like crazy. We had all sorts of good, cozy fall food including caramel apples (we melted caramel over the fire) and fire roasted hot dogs. Fall is by far my favorite season and this cabin trip has become one of my favorite fall traditions.

What are some of your favorite fall traditions?