Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Christmas 2014

When you work in retail and have been forced to listen to Christmas carols on repeat since Black Friday, and every day you feel the mounting pressure to make the holiday season special and have the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER, by the time Christmas actually rolls around escaping to the desert sounds pretty awesome.


So that's what I did. Me and my mom took off to Palm Springs for the holiday, and it was lovely. In trying to escape all the pressure of the holi-daze, I actually ended up having one of the nicest Christmases I can remember. Shout out to Isabel for reminding me to take my Instax on the trip!

Christmas 2014
Christmas Eve in my festive jammies
Christmas 2014
Me and my Momma Bear
Christmas 2014
:D
Christmas 2014
Christmas Morning
Christmas 2014

And we still had tamales, which is basically all you need.

<3

Friday, January 2, 2015

Fifty Book Challenge 2014

A few years ago I heard about the 50 Book Challenge, where you challenge yourself to read 50 books in one year, and my first thought was that I could easily beat that number. My second thought was the realization that I actually had no idea how many books I could get through in a year because I had never kept track, so in 2011 I started keeping a list of every book I read. 2011 has coincidentally also been the only year that I've managed to read over 50 books; the grand total that year was 82. I chalk that up to the fact that it was the year I took the survey courses for my English major, and a couple other courses that were pretty paperback-heavy (45 of the books I read in 2011 were for school). Since that golden year my list tends to hover around the high 30s-low 40s. In 2012 I read 37 books, 45 in 2013, and my total for 2014 is 38.

I really like keeping track of my reading this way, it helps me remember what was going on/where I was when I read each book. I've decided that for 2015 I'm also going to write a review of each book I read here on the blog as a way to hold myself accountable to my list and my blogging schedule. If you have any book recommendations, send 'em my way!

Here's the list for 2014:
*re-reads

1. Hardboiled Wonderland And the End of The World- Haruki Murakami*
2. The Fault in Our Stars- John Green*
3. Ready Player One- Ernest Cline
4. Fly on the Wall- E. Lockhart
5. Call the Midwife- Jennifer Worth
6. Ender's Game- Orson Scott Card
7. One of Us- Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal- Alice Domurat Dreger
8. The Unspeakable Thoughts of Jacob Green- Joshua Braff
9. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle- Haruki Murakami*
10. What Every Body is Saying- Joe Navarro
11. Kindred- Octavia Butler*
12. Divergent- Veronica Roth
13. Insurgent- Veronica Roth
14. Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Woman's Prison- Piper Kerman
15. Allegiant- Veronica Roth
16. The Ocean At the End of the Lane- Neil Gaiman
17. Summer Sisters- Judy Blume
18. White Oleander- Janet Fitch*
19. Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone- J.K. Rowling*
20. Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets- J.K. Rowling*
21. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban- J.K. Rowling*
22. Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire- J.K. Rowling*
23. Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix- J.K. Rowling*
24. Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince- J.K. Rowling*
25. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows- J.K. Rowling*
26. Veinte Poemas de Amor y un Cancion Desesperada- Pablo Neruda
27. Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America- John Waters
28. The Bean Trees- Barbara Kingsolver*
29. Pigs in Heaven- Barbara Kingsolver*
30. Wasteland- Francesca Lia Block*
31. A Tale for the Time Being- Ruth Ozeki
32. Eleanor & Park- Rainbow Rowell
33. The Leftovers- Tom Perrotta
34. Rant- Chuck Palahniuk*
35. Columbine- Dave Cullen
36. It- Stephen King
37. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks- E. Lockhart
38. Like Water for Chocolate- Laura Esquivel*

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

On the Passage of Time

Dear blog, I'm sorry that I abandoned you for almost two months, but that kind of fits into what I wanted to talk about today.

Time is such a weird thing. As of the 19th I've been back in LA one full year, and the weirdest thing about my transition out of being a student is that I have no internal calendar for marking the passage of time anymore. I used to measure things in semesters, and now that I'm not in school and I live in a place with no seasons I feel completely unmoored. I ran out of detergent the other day, and I thought,  'How is this possible I just got this a few weeks ago!" and then realized it had actually been like 5 months ago.

This past year has been a really strange mix of dragging on and passing by too quickly; which I guess to some extent happens every year, but this year even more so. November feels like a long time ago, but it feels like January just happened. We're already almost halfway through 2014! Impossible!

So yeah, bear with me while I try to get a grip on this, and I'll try not to go whole months without posting again.

<3