I had a low-key night reading "A Raven in Amber" by Patricia Smith. I bought it on the spur of the moment, and it was totally worth it in the end. We've all read our fair share of trashy romance novels with surly-for-no-good-reason men and swooning-and-naive women, so I was taken by surprise at the plot and pacing of this one. It had a mystery, true romantic tension, friendly relationships between secondary characters, and native american legends to give the modern-day romance a bit of a primal sub-layer, if that makes sense.
New Year's Day was productive for me. I straightened my room a bit, opened my window to air it out, brushed out Aryx and Scout, and took out the recycling. I also finished my mom's laptop sleeve, which I'll blog about soon with the rest of my "what I made for other people for Christmas" stories. During all of this, I noticed that our Camellia bushes in the front bed had broken into bloom. I actually really look forward to the colder temperatures because of these flowers. Once the buds begin to show, I keep an eye on them because for the first few days, the blooms are absolutely gorgeous!
These buds are probably going to open up tomorrow. I think that the pink tips are very pretty against the green. They remind me of what we're like on New Year's Day: Still little buds, but nearly ready to burst forward into the sunlight of the new year!
My New Year's resolution is broader than it could be, but I think it'll be easier to stick to this way: I'm going to be a better person this year. Eat better, exercise more, make healthier choices, and be a better neighbor and friend. I gossip too much and can be too cuttingly sarcastic. I'm going to be more compassionate, empathetic, and polite, and stop picking fights just to get my bitterness out. I've been reading up on Buddhism lately, which advocates following the eightfold path to find enlightenment. The eightfold path involves cultivating the right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. (A super-brief look into the eightfold path can be found here) So yeah, here's to a bigger, badder, and better new year!
I was extremely lucky to get some great Christmas presents this year. I got a Kindle and have been toting it everywhere since I opened it! I'm a bit worried to break it, so I ordered a case from off-line to protect it. In my search for free books (because I honestly do not feel like paying more than a few bucks for anything that I'll probably read once and never own a physical copy of) I found Project Gutenburg which has downloadable versions of books that are considered public domain. If you use this, you'll need to get a program like calibre to move the files onto your Kindle, Nook, or iPad. But I was able to download the Apocrypha, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Golden Bough (I like reading about myth and religion, y'all, duh!), and the Art of War fo' free! Then I realized that some of them were also free on Amazon so I'm playing around with both versions to see which versions I like more.
I also got a Blu-ray player AND all 8 HP films on Blu-ray. The player that I got is also internet accessible, which means that I'll be able to stream Netflix, Pandora, Youtube, etc, on it when I'm in Charlottesville. I'm not close enough to or even on the same floor as my router to maintain a physical ethernet connection like the box requires, but I'm going to PLAN on that for next year! I love streaming on Netflix, but my 13" laptop can be kind of...limiting? Oh, lord, this is such a #firstworldproblem. I'm just going to quit while I'm ahead.
I'm finished with my internship, so it's back to Newk's full-time starting next week. Re: my NY resolution, I'm going to be a better server, employee, and co-worker. Write it--it is now law!
Nail Polish: Nomad's Dream by OPI. Pic below because I lurve it!
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