Hello Spring

On Oprah

Ohhh Oprah, you and your book club.

As I've expressed before, one of my goals for 2010 is to read more. It's not that I feel I need to expand my horizons, absorb more culture or make myself smarter (although those are all good things to do). I don't have degree guilt, thinking I should consume more classics before I truly "deserve" my degree in English literature or devour contemporary works to justify the creative writing emphasis. The bottom line is that I am truly head-over-heals in LOVE with books. My "to-read" list grows at nearly the rate I am able to read synopses, and so making a goal to read more is entirely to catch myself up to the volumes upon volumes unread on my shelf.

Enter Oprah, the woman who singlehandedly turned 864 grueling pages of Tolstoy into mainstream literature. Contrary to my tweet, I don't dislike Oprah. Nor do I dislike what she has done for literature and American literacy. I'm not worried about my lit-cred, I'm not keeping score... I am, however, on Oprah's e-mail list. Every few weeks I get e-mails featuring the latest new titles or the classics that have stood the test of time with tatalizing synopses and beautiful covers and now my wishlist looks like this.

Also my to-do list is about four times as long, I have about a hundred personal goals and I am downright ashamed over the quantity of clothing with which I do not wish to part. It's rough, this "live your best life" business. Easy for you, Oprah, with your army of assistants and your record-shattering paychecks, your magazine and TV show...

Oprah, my heart is in the right place. It really is. But at the end of the day I'm going to go watch my second episode of Jersey Shore before I check to see if my antennae will pick up Idol and harvest some virtual crops. I will also watch Planet Earth segments and read Discover magazine before bed. You win some you lose some.

I Like Mondays

It's true! This is the one day of the week where I feel fresh, motivated and energized enough to take on anything and everything that needs to be done.

I don't get it either - you'd think get-it-all-done time would happen at some point during the weekend... but no.

I'm trying to turn it into some sort of all-encompassing statement about tackling problems and things from the front end rather than letting it all happen and just try to clean up afterward... but I should know better than to try and fit any number of my quirks into some umbrella statement that attempts to explains them. It's like trying to fit every little exception to a loosly-defined rule into its own rigidly-defined rule - if the point is to simplify, then you've missed it entirely.

Without further ado, Happy Monday! I can't wait to get all my groceries, sort through some laundry, vacuum and organize... with one more hour of sunlight, woohoo!

[Quiet Nights via PDR]