ShepAlders Rule!

Sunday, January 23, 2011

I know we've left some stuff out

We've had a busy few months, so some of the stuff we ordinarily post about has gotten a little lost in the melee. First and foremost is the annual BNAT post. Josh is working on it, but has been super distracted lately (mostly watching football, but also actually working). I was also going to post about all the awesome food we ate in Phoenix, but it involves a lot of links, youtube clips, and possibly some clever puns so I haven't gotten around to it. I promise, these posts are coming eventually.

But I can tell you about our upcoming trip in March so you can look forward to even more posts we haven't written yet. Josh has been in the process of finalizing hotels, but we bought our plane tickets a few weeks ago for ROCHESTER, NEW YORK! Woot!

Okay, really we're going on a church history tour, driving from Palmyra to St. Louis in a week, stopping at temples (not in order: Palmyra, Toronto, Nauvoo, Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis) and other church history spots. For our one reader who likes our posts about the temples we've visited, I know this is going to be exciting.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Story of my Red Right Ankle

One of my new year's resolutions is to run a half marathon some time this year. To prepare, I'm planning to run a 5K, then a 10K, which involves a lot of preparation. Today, while I was practicing my running, this happened:

Pretty gross, right? Yeah, I thought so too. Josh is all impressed now because he thinks I'm super hardcore because I knew my sock wasn't covering my ankle correctly and I kept going anyway (for 4 miles.... though it's a lot easier when you're going so slowly, though maybe not because it meant my ankle was rubbing for almost an hour).

Then Josh reminded me of one of the first picture texts I ever sent him, which was my leg after I had fallen over (trying to be funny), ripped my (favorite) jeans, and skinned myself so badly I was dripping blood. I was clearly not trying to impress anyone. True story.

Monday, January 17, 2011

30 Books Before I'm 30: Suite Francaise

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

"She remembered the defeated soldiers of the French army who a year before had fled through the town, dirty, exhausted, dragging their combat boots in the dust. Oh, my God, so this is war... An enemy soldier never seemed to be alone-- one human being like any other-- but followed, crushed from all directions by innumerable ghosts, the missing and the dead. Speaking to him wasn't like speaking to a solitary man, but to an invisible multitude..."

"Suite" refers to an ordered set of orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert rather than as accompaniment. Nemirovsky planned to write a five-piece novel, but only finished the first two parts before she was detained in a concentration camp and killed. Previous to her death she was a successful writer in Paris. Her daughters kept her notebooks but they weren't read until 1998.

This novel starts on the evening of the German occupation of Paris and follows a series of people whose lives intertwine. The first part ("Storm in June") is about the people leaving the city and coming back, and the second book ("Dolce") is about the German occupation of a small town.

Things I Liked: I got into this book almost right away. It's short (okay, 367 pages but it felt short), quick, and offers a view of WWII that is very relatable in a way that stories about concentration camps are not for me. The terror and horror of a concentration camp-- the threat of being found (like The Diary of Anne Frank) or living in one (like a play I was in during college-- Playing for Time) is so blindingly scary, it's hard for me not to turn off immediately and not allow myself to be emotionally involved in the stories (additionally, I've been told more than once [and I am not kidding here] that I have a perfect Aryan face and would have survived the holocaust). But I can relate to this book. I can imagine myself fleeing from bombs, and while the characters were choosing which possessions to bring with them as they fled, I mentally listed the things that I, also, could not leave without (Josh, cats, pictures, maybe my good china).

Things I Didn't Like: There are a lot of characters in this book. A lot. Some of them make multiple appearances, some of them are only meaningful for a couple of pages. I did a lot of flipping back to try to remember who did what and where (there's a particularly bad guy who I kept confusing with a different, similarly bad guy). The second part pretty much stays on the same people, though, and was a much more engaging read.

I also didn't like that the book is unfinished, but I guess I can blame the Nazis for that.

This Book Would be Best if Read: During a long car ride (if you don't get carsick), on a beach, before bed. The chapters are short, though if you take too long to read it you might forget some of the characters who make reappearances.

I Would Recommend this Book to: Anyone and everyone. I'm not sure how stereotypically "manly" it is, but there are plenty of soldiers, lots of action, and more than half the characters are male. There are a few "kind of" love stories that are slightly sappy, but it takes place during WWII, so you know there won't be a happy ending.

If You Liked This Book, You Might Also Like: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, the movie Swing Kids (yeah, I'm recommending it).

Up Next: I really have no idea what I'm going to read next. Does anyone have suggestions from this pre-selected list of books?

I'm 11 down, with 19 and a little more than 6 months to go. Unfortunately, I've been sneaking in some books for pleasure, as well as dissertation articles and textbooks, so it's been going a lot slower than I thought it would.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

We took down our Christmas tree today...

... and it reminded me that I neglected to post about our new ornaments this year. Josh and I like to collect ornaments from the various places we visit, and then at the end of the year we get to reminisce about the fun trips we've taken during the year.

Since the last time we put up our tree, we have visited:

Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX

The U.S.S. Texas (also in Houston)

NYC, NY

Ellis Island

The Empire State Building

Salem, Mass.

Pearl Harbor

Disneyland

We also acquired some decorations:

Last year, Christmas 2009, my sister Abby gave me these nativity ducks. SO CUTE!

We also got to hang out with my family at Hoodoo for NYE:

with my nieces Alice and Katie

Josh showed up too

Everyone was being pretty freaking cute

There were also fireworks, which is my absolute favorite part of NYE. You can't beat fireworks over snow.

Ducks in the Desert

We didn't just go to temples while we were in Arizona, we also did things like eat a lot of food (you can look forward to a post about that later), laze in the lazy river at our hotel, and hike Piestewa/Squaw Peak. The hike is a lot harder than it looks because it is mostly straight up, on rough terrain, and is like climbing a very steep staircase. As with most things, I figured that if kids could do it then I could too.

Halfway through, we were still smiling, despite the sweat:

The view of Phoenix was amazing!

This gives you a little idea of what the hike was like (very rough!):

The "stairs":

Josh had an unfortunate encounter with a prickly friend:

But it turned out he was a Duck fan too:

Because Piestewa Peak is so popular, we had to park pretty far away. Sadly, in the time that we got to the peak, parked, hiked, and got back to the car, this happened. We spent much of the next few days watching the news.

Then we went to a little event...