War and Peace and Lent

I started reading War and Peace, partly because I've really wanted to read it since I went to see the War and Peace movie marathon at the Russian Embassy and partly because now I have real motivation in the form of Annie-the-amazing. (It is also her birthday for another half-hour, so С Днем Рождения! or should I say joyeux anniversaire?) Anyway, She suggested we read it together and commit to posting about it as we go, we decided on Lent which gives us 40 days (and is only very mildly sacrilegious.)
I'm really excited, reading is one of those things like strawberries that I seem to forget I actually love -- I can go for months at a time until I pick up a good book or taste a really ripe strawberry and wonder how I survived without serious withdraw. When I was at Thomas More I read a ton. (And I also watched nearly no TV, where did that go?) By read a ton I mean we read Crime and Punishment in barely over a week. And that's a big Russian novel, notable not as big as War and Peace, but still a serious amount of people with really long names and significantly unpleasant lives. So 40 days for War and Peace is totally doable - plus that might even include Sundays off. Tolstoy's novel includes more than 1,100 pages, hundreds of characters, and 365 chapters. You could read it a chapter everyday for a year as the world's weirdest page-a-day-tear-away-calender.

Why yes, you are correct -- my Russian novel does appear to be speaking French.

The opening line to the effect of "Hey how about those Bonapartes?" has got nothing on Anna K's unhappy families, or Rebecca's dream of Manerley, or Rachel's Four Turnings, but it gets the book going nonetheless. And so we begin!

Got any Russian novel reading advice for us?

Gettin' Crafty

...and pretending I'm pinteresting

I've been all sorts of grown-up in the past month: applying for lots of non-4-am-style-jobs, signing a lease (+10 grown-up-points!) and I even let the doctor draw my blood despite the fact that: A. I was using that blood and B. I have a hardcore-panic-reaction to needles ever since I stepped on an up-side-down-pin-cushion (something I would entirely advise against). On another note though, I've also been mildly crafty crocheting myself some borderline-homeless-dude-glove-things and making myself a kindle case. Tada!

I love my Kindle. I love it even more after finding out how useful a compact-yet-endless-supply-of-books is when commuting to school /living overseas. I wanted a Kindle case to avoid losing my dear Kinny to an untimely-end-by-screen-damage, but my word are they expensive! Seriously -- most  cases cost a 1/3 to 1/2 as much as the Kindle itself. Not cool people.

[I've also got a whole rant about how nonsensical it is that other e-books and cases don't work with kindles and vice-versa, cause it's idiotic. Dvds, cd, mp3 and freaking cassettes work in other brands' players, so why not e-books?  Makes about as much sense as country-coding dvds --Also stupid. Ranty-rant-rant.]

Anyhow... I decided to just make my own case. Recent pre-moving-cleaning-o'-my-room resulted in compiling the disturbing amount of unused notebooks/journals I own into huge piles. Although the upside to my unruly addiction to notebooks is that I had a great little "Keep Calm and Have a Cupcake" journal that I got on sale at some point from Barnes and Noble. So 1, 2, 3, I converted it from a cute notebook to an awesome kindle case in the span of just one episode of Castle:

1. Removed most but not all of the pages.
First I just carefully torn out most of the sections of pages. I left in about three little sections, because the notebook's spine is slightly thicker than my Kindle and because it gives me some note-taking/thoughts-on-books-recordings space in the front which seems pretty handy. (I also left in just a couple of pages in the very back)

2. Glued in elastic hold-in-place-bits.
After trying a couple of other types of glue, I switched to a hot glue gun, which is honestly right up there with duct-tape, so it should have just been the first thing I tried. Naturally it worked the best. I glued the ends in place with the elastic around the back of where I wanted it to be, then once it dried/cooled I just flipped 'em round into place.

3. Prettied it up.
I covered up the glued-down-edges with the pages I had left in the back, plus more hot-glue-gunning to be sure everything stayed in place. Then I put a bit of black ribbon over the torn-out-messy-looking-spine. And I moved the pocket from the inside of the back cover to the front so I could still use it -- with the very artistic tactic of ripping it out of the back and gluing it inside the front. Yup, I'm oh-so-skilled.



And so voila! I have an awesome meme-inspired-cupcake-themed-home-made-ish-kindle-case-with-note-taking-pages-included. It would be just as easy to make a case for a nook/ different sized kindle/ ipad, as long as you find a notebook it fits. 

I decided against using the other cute-notebook-of-the-right-size that I found in my room, because it had a magnetic closure and I don't know enough about technology to know if that would have bad-effects on my kindle over time. Better safe than sorry.

Now I'm off to read some of my abundant collection-of-public-domain-and-therefore-free-to-download-classic-lit on my well-dressed little Kinny-the-Kindle.

P&P and LBD

Guess what today is?
Today is January 28th, 2013 and that makes it the 200th anniversary of the publications of Pride and Prejudice! Yay alliteration and congrats Jane Austen!
It's a brilliant book and there are a couple of wonderful film/mini-series adaptations (Collin Firth!). However my favorite by far is the current vlog-style-adaptation-on-You-Tube-produced-by-John-Green's-brother-Hank-Green-of-nerdfighteria. It is the most clever and engaging adaptation I've ever seen. I may like it even better than the book, although my inner-lit-major recoils at that blasphemous thought.

Lydia-as-Lizzie and Lizzie-as-Darcy
for a Jane-Austen-Dance-Scene
It's super clever in context, trust me. 

This web series is really amazingly well done though, so well done that I actually like Lydia! The loud-crazy-ditsy-trouble-attracting-little-sister-Lydia, at this point I adore her and her videos are some of my favorites. (And I may or may not stand around hipster-filled-concerts overly-engaged with my best-y about the lives of fictional characters, but I sure wouldn't admit that over the interwebs)
Regardless of my border-line-unsanity though, you should check out the Lizzie Bennet Diaries to celebrate P&P's bi-centennial birthday. Go now and watch the first handful by clicking on this poorly constructed sentence.  But ye've been warned, once you are hooked there is risk of severe addiction. These guys not only are on youtube, they tweet, and pin and have facebooks and the cleverness abounds everywhere.
To top it off Lizzie may have answered a question from me in one of her videos and it may have been my favorite internet moment ever. Although this kid's peptalk may be my new favorite moment on the internet now -- you should check out that too.
Happy birthday Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Bing, and Darcy! And well done Miss Austen and the LBD team!

2012

New year, new background. Whadd'ya think? The get-computer-file-to-do-what-I-want-credit all goes to my big bro and sis-in-law who are both clever and attractive. Thank you both so much.

Since I ended last year with a list of 2011's highlights I'm posting some for 2012 as well. This was by-and-large the year I moved to Galway. Living in Ireland for 5 months was amazing and uncomparable (comparableless? incomparable? What is the word I'm looking for?) I learned a ton, made great friends, and soaked up so many wonderful memories, while soaking up an overabundance of rain water as well. The rest of the year back here in the states has been full of life and loveliness as well. Here are my 12 highlights of 2012 all haphazardly and in no particular order:

1-- Moving to Galway, everything from the plane-turned-train ride leaving BWI in January, to exploring and getting to know my darling city, to my wonderful visitors, to stepping back into Maryland humidity again in May was intense and bright with travel-details. I will always love the little city of Galway.

2-- 74 St Branden's Ave and the girls I lived with were better than I could have hoped for. Turns out moving overseas to live in a house with complete strangers you've only ever emailed a couple of times can be a perfectly fine idea, no ax-murders for me.

3-- My piccolo trip to Paris, as my first really solo trip it was unbeatable. I was thrilled to met up with Rei and her hubby on their trip from Japan. Not only did I get to see a precious friend, Paris made me feel brave.

4-- Rome, mio first amore. Possibly the only city I love more than Galway. I threw another coin into the Trevi fountain so I'll be sure to return. Then we visited friend's friends in Florence and Turin drinking in even  more great memories and the world's most delicious nutella-and-espresso drink.

5-- Dancing, One of the highlight of being home in Maryland is Mobtown Ballroom. Taking Lindy Hop lessons and going to see the incredible dancers at ILHC were high points of my summer. Now I can even do a successful swing-out without tripping over my own feet . . . most of the time.

6-- Jobs, This year I was also a productive member of society working at Starbucks, Program-Directoring at camp, interning at Manna Inc, and starting my job with Habitat for Humanity Montgomery County. Now I'm even sort-of-kinda-maybe figuring out what I want to do long-er-ish-term for work.

7-- Babies, since I was back in the States I flew out to WI for my old-college-roomie's baby's baptism. Then when I was suppose to fly home Super-Storm-Sandy hit, delaying my flight. Meaning I was able to help take the world's cutest Carpenter, Walrus, and Oyster trick-or-treating. "This!"

8-- Books/Films/Plays. This year I read and saw plenty of awesome books and films. The Fault in Our Stars is most definitely one of my new favorite books. And while I can't quite say I liked it, I'm not sure I would ever see a more emotionally intense movie than As If I Am Not Even There. Plus Cabin in the Woods, Avengers, and Cloud Atlas were kick-butt-good. And I got to see brilliant plays down in DC.

9--Русски - Fall 2012 I took Russian 101 with my lil' bro which was really fun. Did you know the Russian word for brother is brat? That is also fun. (although my little brother is totally not a brat)

10--Grown-up-ish-stuff, I have also spent a good deal of time this year getting rid of stuff I don't need, learning to cook/ feed myself and clean and budget better, and to stay sane as a semi-responsible adult.

11--T.V. Another good amount of my time was spent watching every episode of Downton Abbey, Friends, The West Wing, and How I Met Your Mother.

12-- The Boss in concert in Philly, was another bug highlight of 2012. Bruce Springsteen played for more than four hours straight and was amazing - blew my mind. The concert was incredibly fun. I hope to be just a fractious of that energetic and impressive when I'm in my 60s.

Over the course of this past year I've checked off bucket list items I didn't even have on my imaginary list: spending the night in an Italian train station, getting John Green's signature, taking a freezing-cold-April-dip in the Mediterranean, impressing an Irish lad with my tolerance for whiskey, puking off the side of a boat, finding the world's coolest tree, and watching a movie marathon at an embassy. 2012 has given me plenty of great stories. For this new year, I don't think I'm going to try any new year's resolutions, I'm just hoping to be more brave, adventurous, compassionate, and strong in 2013.

Non-Profit Love

... Or How I Become a Envelope Sealing Expert

Thursday I went back to Habitat after the break for the holidays. Therefore I'm finishing/posting an old post about my dear non-profit-job. The grown-up-ish of my current two jobs is working part-time at Habitat for Humanity MoCo as the person who organizes all the Faith Team Builds and whatnot. It's fun.  Plus I get to sit at a desk = both fun-ish and grown-up. 

In addition to sending out copious amounts of emails, I also man a table at volunteer fairs and help at events. I've wrapped presents at a Barnes and Noble, bar-tended at the 30 anniversary event, attended college volunteer fairs, and gone to a children's mitzvah fair. A few weeks back I spent a couple of days working on a mailing with my boss and volunteers from Riderwood. [Riderwood is a retiree's utopia: huge campus of building with every level of assisted living, any club you could imagine, groups out the wazoo, shuttles to stores, and pretty much anything cool you could think up.]

War And Peace Marathon

Back in November I spent a day watching a marathon screening of War and Peace at the Russian Embassy. I spent the whole entire day because this was a screening of a four-part eight-hour Russian version. As a reward for sitting through all the way till the end we each received a pin, I've never been so proud.

Yes, I may have been more excited to get this button than my college degree, it was hard earned.  

Hens and Thoughts for Christmas

"On the third night of Christmas my true love gave to me

                                     Three french hens!  Two turtle doves! 

And a partridge in a pear tree!"

Mu-ha-ha fear my awesome google-images + paint abilities!
I give you ... three french hens!

I've got Christmas-related-thoughts, so I'm going with the whole today-is-only-the-3rd-of-12-days-of-Christmas giving me until Epiphany in January. On that note, let me wish you a merry day-three-of-x-mas! Enjoy the French chickens! And here are my mildly-ramble-ly-thoughts:

End of the World

...And I Feel Fine

I love the internet, and the internet loves the ancient-Mayan dates-for-the-end-o'-the-world. Since today is December 21st, I think we should have a good soundtrack for the apocalypse this one is funny, and of course this one is perfect, but this one is one of my favorites:

"I'm waking up at the start of the end of the world

But it's feeling just like every other morning before..."

Got any other good ones for today?

Annie, Bernadette, and Bilbo

I went to see The Hobbit with my childhood neighbors and awesomesauce friends Annie and Bernedette last weekend. Super duper exciting. 

 

Posting a Post

It's been forever (or honestly just too long for me to be pleased) since I actually finished and posted a blog post.

Democracy

Yesterday was the election -- ballots were cast, results were announced, and there was much rejoicing and/or weeping and gnashing of teeth. I have a lot of thoughts about the race, the president, and our ballot questions like 5 and 6 and 7, but I think those deserve a more thoughtful post and honestly I am mildly hesitant of topics that are such holy hand grenades so today I am just having E.B. White do all the work for me. I heard this earlier today and really liked it, Charlotte and Wilbur's creator originally wrote it during World War Two.

E.B.White's meaning of democracy:

    "We received a letter from the Writers' War Board the other day asking for a statement on "The Meaning of Democracy." It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.

'56 Hungarian Revolution

... the flag with a hole in it

October 23rd is the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, so today I'm going to indulge my history-major-side. Junior year I did an Oral History project interviewing a man who fought in the 1956 uprising as a 15 years old. Part of why I find the Hungarian revolution so fascinating is I spent a summer with brilliant Hungarians, I adore Budapest, and my grandma's side of the family is Hungarian. But it's also fascinating because they were my age and even younger, because those two and a half weeks were epic, and because it's the type of story you hope will end well --even when you know the ending.

I hope it's more like a story and less like a term-paper,
because these people were amazing

In October 1956 Polish workers went on strike, an incredibly risky thing to do under a strict communist government. This inspired students at the Technological University of Budapest, they organized a simple protest walking along the Danube down to a statue of Bam - a Polish native and Hungarian hero who had fought in the 1848 revolution. The students created a list of 16 demands and as their protest grew and attracted more and more students and then workers and people from all over the city they went to the radio station to broadcast them.

Their demands were first off the removal of all Soviet troops from Hungary. Soviet forces had liberated Budapest and Hungary from Nazi forces at the end of World War Two. While it is a huge relief when someone gets rid of Nazis, it becomes worrisome when they immediately set up their own secret police in the same office building and people continue to disappear to the dungeons and death, with no sign that the troops have any plans on leaving it is not as acceptable.

The student's 16 demands listed free and legitimate elections open to all parties.

For the Love of Funny Alphabets

 This fall I'm taking Russian 101. Just for fun because I enjoy studying languages and have a slight obsession with funny alphabets. To be honest this is probably due to the fact that my real desire when-I-grow-up is to be Mara and overthrow evil-ancient-egyptian-pharaohesses by acting as a-double-spy-translator-bad-ass-chick-who-runs-around-bare-foot. Since these dreams of being an blue-eyed-ancient-egpytian-bi-lingual-secret-rebel will most likely never be a reality, I have to settle for attempting to be bi-lingual . . . or more actually jump at any chance to study a language that has a funny alphabet. Although I am miles away from fluent in anything but English, I very much enjoy my kindergarten-level-of-skill at sounding-letters-out-painfully-slow-to-attempt-to-read-words, because the fact that those foreign squiggles mean anything intelligible to me makes me happy.

Day of the Brave

The United Nations made October 11th international Day of the Girl, which is particularly fitting as the recent attacks on Malala has brought a more attention to the issues she has been writing about and fighting for since she was eleven. Because this girl so-freaking-amazing-awesome that she has been standing up to the taliban since she was barely double-digits-old. I pray and hope she and her classmate fully recover. It is impressive to see how powerful the ideas of this young lady are, that they're seen as a threat to the taliban. Malala is an epic example of what a dis-proportional-positive-effect educating girls provides for their community.

Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani blogger fighting for girls to be able to go to school 

the play is just a can of soup

... the audience is really the art

Last weekend we went to a see The Government Inspector at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Not Shakespeare but really good anyway). This play-going all began when I needed to see a couple different productions for THET 101 at HCC. At one point in that theater class my professor mentioned that I should check out Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe when I was looking for a  monologue. I Googled it and loved the part of the play I found. Although I intend to, I've never actually read/ seen the whole play, but the portion I came across that someone posted is pretty great. Since it pops into my head at plays I looked it up again and decided to share it here too. [Googled it again actually and despite what Blogger might try to tell me that is in fact a word]

Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans

The Government Inspector

My brothers, sis-in-law, and I went to see The Shakespeare Theatre Company's Government Inspector last weekend and it was quite fun. The lovely STC has much-less-costly-to-get-to-see-lots-of-awesome-plays-season-subscriptions-for-students/under-35ers because it makes them so happy to see non-retired-white-hair-audience-members. We tend to pair of theater-going with yummy food beforehand and I'm extremely proud to say that we have almost completely out-grown of our traditional jog-from-place-with-yummy-food-to-theater-to-rush-to-seats-before-curtain-is-raised, not that it wasn't an exhilarating way to start a play.

Gogol's The Government Inspector is a satire about a town and its mayor who mistake a gambles-too-much-lady's-man-lowly-and-currently-broke-government-clerk with a fear-and-bribe-inducing-Government-Inspector -- hilarity ensues. You know it's a comedy because of all the doors and bright colors on stage. And there was all the laughter too.
I loved lines like: "When I see the stupid faceless masses I just want to scream 'Where are your faces?! Are you stupid?!'" The characters all had a nearly a Scarlet Pimpernel level of ridiculousness which continued nonetheless to be charming and entertaining.
The costumes were no-bones-about-it comic. To the point that the interchangeable-and-often-mixed-up middle class Pyotr Ivanovich Bobosky and Pyotr Ivanovich Dodosky were all but dressed like umpa-lumpas. Seeing a Russian play was also fun to complement the Russian I've been attempting to learn (but more on that later).

Out of Gas

A few weeks ago my best-ever-big-bro ran out of gas and I came to his rescue then made a bit of fun of him. As is my right as a lil-sister. However, it appears the gas-tank-karma-gods thought it would be funny to use this as a learning opportunity.

French the Llama

* Point of reference John Green has a YouTube
 channel with his brother Hank: Vlogbrothers
 lots of fans: Nerdfighters, and books: Looking for
Alaska, Papertowns, Will Garyson, Abundance
of Katherines, and The Fault in Our Stars = All very much awesome.

John Green was at the National Book Festival in DC last weekend. There were dozens of other authors, plenty of books and a couple of my oldest-dearest-friends there was well. But let's be honest, I switched work-shifts, changed plans with my brothers, and may have even sat-in-the-heat-for-nearly-three-hours, because John Green was there. As a nerdy-great-author-youtuber-fan-girl it was completly worth it.

John Green read the author's note and first few pages of Fault in Our Stars then spoke and took questions. Brilliant and fascinating as always. Here are some bits and pieces that I can remeber/ attempt to explain. He said it better than I do, so pretend that this is all coming from a professional-good-with-words-guy:

Missing Gorse

... and other symptoms of Ireland-sickness

After camp we say you get "camp-sick", just as you might have been home-sick when you arrived. There are moments when I find myself a little bit emerald-island-sick. I am grateful as all get out to be home and surrounded by friends and family with a car and jobs and swing dancing and so many people I love within easy access, but I love Ireland as well.

It's been rainy here at home and nothing screams Ireland like rainy days. The rain reminds me of Ireland, it was chilly-near-consent-type of rain and our dear little (un-heated) house on St Brendan's Ave was quite cold, but I remember much more the overwhelming warmth of walking into a pub at night or the cozy comfort of sipping tea wrapped in a blanket on our couch watching the Love Machine or something equally as ridiculous.

Gorse growing on Crogh Patrick (and photographed in the rain)

Remembering

Flags, hats badges, and notes left
at the Flight 93 temporary memorial  

 Since the anniversary of 9-11 has been set aside as a National Day of Service our Habitat for Humanity office spent today on a team-build working at one of the houses. Service seems to me like a fitting way to recognize the day. Like nearly everyone else I have my vivid memories of the morning itself: the cloudless blues sky, being a just-turned-12-year-old-in-brand-new-school-clothes, finding out over aol instant message to turn on the news, seeing the second tower hit on live TV, and sitting in my friends' backyard that afternoon watching for the occasional military plane in that clear blue sky.
The crash site of United Flight 93 in Shanksville Pennsylvania became a National Park just 6 weeks after Sept 11. A sort of spontaneous memorial began as well as people began to leave candles, notes, and flowers - much like they did in New York. But since the site is in the middle of a field instead of a city, the temporary memorial in PA continued to grow for the past decade. The park opened the official memorial last year and it's peaceful, beautiful, and well done. And the archive of items brought in to be protected from the rain continues to grow. One of my history classes went up to see the temporary memorial and the amount of things left by visitors was captivating.