Happenings

Reading: Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones. If you haven't read Mister Pip, you need to run - run! - to your nearest bookstore and buy it. Or get it on your kindle and devour it. It's that fantastic. I read this book a couple of years ago when I picked it up at the Lifeline bookfest. I grabbed it because the title of the book reminded me of my favorite Dickens novel, Great Expectations (sidebar: I think it's my favorite because of its conciseness - does anyone else think that?). Imagine my delight when I discovered that the whole book was about the transformative power of novels; in this story, Dickens' novels. Also - get excited! - they are making a movie, due soon, starring Hugh Laurie as the kooky Mr. Watts. Then, a couple of weeks ago, my friend Annie (who has scarily similar tastes in books to me) added this book to her "Books I've Read" section on Facebook, which prompted me to go back and re-read it because this book is pure magic.

Watching: Bones is back on TV here in Australia, so I'm falling for the show all over again. *Sigh*.

Listening: I'm falling back into old habits, listening to music that can take me to favorite times and places. Chase This Light by Jimmy Eat World is notable when I get in this mood. I think that was possibly one of the happiest periods of my life. I was just starting Senior Year, I was getting my driver's license, I was full an insane amount of confidence. Oh, and I was falling in love with the boy who had given me this CD.

Loving: Here are three things to give you the happies!

1. Nerdy Love Song - filled with nerdy pickup lines. I tried some of these on Wade tonight, as he's currently at an extremely nerdy debate featuring Lawrence Krauss and William Lane Craig entitled Life, The Universe and Nothing. Please excuse the language - but this song is a classic, and the kitty is gorgeous.

2. Following Grammarly on Facebook. Because of a glitch in completing my Arts degree I have to take another subject on grammar. This is my third grammar-intensive subject in four years, and it has caused me to start calling people out on incorrect uses of who / whom. Yeah... Anyway, Grammarly is awesome because every day you get pictures like this one that make you want to punch the air, even if you are on a bus. I do have an opinion about the Oxford Comma!

3. Annnnd, the 27 Most Relatable Jessica Day Quotes. Especially this one.

- H

Happenings

Reading: Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris. I love Sedaris, and this is one of my favorites. Since all my books are in storage until Wade and I move, I've been re-reading my favorite eBooks on my Kindle. The chapter about a subway ride he took while living in Paris is possibly my favorite thing ever written.

“People are often frightened of Parisians, but an American in Paris will find no harsher critic than another American.” 

I'm exceptionally excited about An Evening With David Sedaris at the Powerhouse next year!

Watching: Packed to the Rafters. As soon as I heard this show was finishing, I started watching it, and made my sisters and my mom watch it too. We're totally hooked. It's so different to my family life, because it's incredibly Aussie but that's why we love it.

Listening: I found an old mix CD that I made for Wade in '08. It rocks. I'm serious, I love every single song on the CD. It's very Blink and A New Found Glory-heavy which is weird, until I remembered that that was all Wade listened to for a while there and I obviously got into it too.

Loving: This awesome little desktop calendar by Rebecca Seale. I always set her calendars as my wallpaper, and when Wade and I buy an actual house, I would love to buy one of her personalized house portraits.

- H

Happenings

Reading: Textbooks, textbooks, and... oh yeah, more textbooks. It's exam time, if you hadn't guessed and I'm elbow-deep in post-feminist theory and English Lit criticism at the moment. Fun.

Watching: Firefly with my dad. Wade is a bit of a geek, and loves this show - as in, he would contribute to a Kickstarter project to create a second season, or another feature film a la Veronica Mars - so my dad, who is also a bit of a geek bought it and we are now watching it. As in, right now, I am blogging, watching Firefly and have a textbook open next to me. My dad is loving it, I can tell. I mean, the man owns whole seasons of Battlestar Galactica.

Listening: The Hamish and Andy Podcast. I don't know what it is about these guys, but I think they're absolutely hilarious! Nothing better than kicking back and listening to twenty minutes of hilarity in between study sessions.

Loving: French bulldog puppies. Random, yes? Wade promised me that once we buy a place to live I can get a fur-baby, so I've been researching dogs. Growing up, we had Max and our next door neighbors had Pip - the two best dogs in the world. Pip was a mutt, and I guess Max was too (he was supposed to be a Jack Russell, but he's definitely not!) I love dogs, and I think I want a French Bulldog, but a few minutes ago, I showed Wade this picture, and he said, That is the ugliest dog I've ever seen. So maybe not.

via Life is Beautiful

Not loving: I'm going to add this category because I'd just like to say death to mall kiosks! Those people trying to grab you and sell you moisturizers and hair straighteners and make you sign petitions about things you don't believe in. Usually my tactic is to ignore them, but just recently I got totally cussed out by one guy for saying, "no, thank you". I feel like everyone is equally annoyed by them, and it makes me not want to try their products because of how annoying the kiosk people are - I'm looking at you Dead Sea Minerals. If everybody just walked on by, rather than responding when one of the sleazy guys said, "hello gorgeous, can I interest you in a free sample?" then maybe malls could get rid of them for good. /end rant/

Happenings

Reading: The Sweetheart Season - Karen Joy Fowler. I picked this one up at a secondhand bookstore because I really enjoyed reading The Jane Austen Bookclub, so I thought it might be similar. It's not. But I'm enjoying it nonetheless. It's set in post-WWII, where a small town is suffering a shortage of men who have not returned from the war, but instead "moved on to greener pastures" and married foreign women, or out-of-towners. To solve this, the town starts an all-girl baseball team. If you read it, let me know how you like it!

Watching: Masterchef Australia. I realized that Wade and I have watched every single series of this show together (we're in season 5 now!), and I still absolutely love it. I love watching cooking shows, but it never inspires me to cook. Wade loves watching them - I think because he thinks it will someday inspire me to cook. Right now, Wade is the chef in our relationship. I make the coffee, and occasionally bake.

Listening: What else? Random Access Memories - Daft Punk. For a while there, Get Lucky was my jam, and so when the album came out I downloaded it on Spotify. At first it was so different that I wasn't enjoying it as much as I thought i, but then I started listening to tracks such as Lose Yourself to Dance, and now I'm loving it again.

Loving: Three links today! First, this manicure on The Beauty Department:

Second, this article about living in my favorite city, 25 Things I wish I knew before moving to San Francisco, which also includes this great (and slightly hilarious) infographic:

And finally, this awesome collection by photographer Jamie C. Moore to celebrate her daughter's fifth birthday:

 Enjoy!

- H

Happenings

Reading: The Most Important Year - Wolgemuth & Devries. Last night, Wade and I had dinner with some dear friends, Reuben and Donna. We were talking about our first year of marriage and our expectations of that. Donna ran over to her bookshelf and grabbed this book. "You need to read this!" they told us. The premise of the book is that the first year of marriage will set up the rest of your entire life together if you get into good habits and good ways of relating early. I started reading this book as soon as I got home, and didn't resurface until three hours later. It was an incredibly easy read, but packed with so much practical wisdom that I am rereading and taking notes. I usually like to highlight the crap out of books that I own, but because this book isn't mine, I can't do that - until my copy from Amazon comes that is!

Watching: Arrow - Season 1
I love a good superhero show. I'm a total geek, especially when it comes to Superman shows. I have seen every episode of Lois & Clark, and Smallville, so I was really looking forward to Arrow. If I ever got into screenwriting for TV (this used to be my dream, until I studied screenwriting and discovered that you had to be able to accept criticism all the time), I have a great superhero show that I've been writing in my head for, oh, I don't know, seven years.

Listening: Wade bought my brother the LeCrae CD, Gravity and I stole it off him and I'm listening to it now. I don't want to love Christian rappers, but I have to say, this particular guy is really growing on me. Thanks a lot, Wade.

Loving:
This piece by David Delahunty. It combines a childhood favorite book with an adulthood favorite jam. What more could you ask for?

Source: behance.net

Wanting: We found our dream apartment today after months of apartment hunting. It's the right price, in the right location and it has everything I've been looking for, from hardwood floors, to an open kitchen, to a separate laundry and bright, white walls. We have had a couple of setbacks while applying for a home loan, but I really hope that this could be the one!


- H

Happenings

Reading: The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
I just recently found out that Nicole Krauss was married to Jonathon Safran Foer, and that it was published at the same time as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which makes me very excited for some reason. I'm only on the second chapter, but I'm enjoying myself quite a lot!

Watching: Parenthood - Season 4
Just watched the finale of this season, and I have gotten so hooked that if it doesn't get renewed for a fifth season, I think I might cry. Pathetic, I know.

Listening: All the workout playlists on Spotify. I find that mixing it up gives me more motivation to go harder. My favorite track at the moment is Don't You Worry Child - Swedish House Mafia. What's your favorite workout track / playlist?

Loving: The new A Beautiful Mess app. It's scrapbooking meets blogging meets Instagram, and it's amazing! Here's us today. I was supposed to be doing an assignment, but Wade had other plans!

Wanting: A pair of jeweled or glittered flats for the wedding. I hurt my knee pretty badly and I'm not supposed to wear heels now... not that that's stopped me so far! But I have a feeling that dancing the night away in stilettos might be a bad idea. I love these flats, but unfortunately there's not really a way to find my size or get a pair shipped all the way down here. Hopefully I can find something similar in Australia - and soon!