I'll work on the blog template some time later.

Here's a list of things I failed to accomplish this break:

Lots and lots and lots of reading
Website updation

Pretty good, huh?

I did get some reading done, though, and it was very satisfactory. I borrowed three books from my aunt and completed one of them. I'm desperately trying to finish the second before I leave tomorrow. It's the first Mitford book - At Home in Mitford by Jan Karen. Karon? I can't remember. Anyway, I remember a couple of years ago my mom, my aunts, and my female cousins were all urging me to read "The Mitford books" so I read the first few pages and decided they weren't my type. Now I've stopped procrastinating and I'm putting a real effort into liking them.

With Taliesin, I put a real effort into liking the series. I read the first 500 page whopper. I believe now I got an adequate taste of what the rest of the series is like. The plot is kind of predictable, actually...but that's not why I've decided not to complete the series. It's fantasy. I've never been able to get into fantasy. I don't even like Lord of the Rings (I can see you now - "And you consider yourself an avid reader! Gasp! Do you like the movies? Don't you know the movies were based on BOOKS? How can you not like the books!" Now that I've predicted your thoughts, you don't need to tell me them. So there.) I don't like the remaining books of the Ender series past the first three, because they seem to turn into more fantasy than sci-fi to me. Of course, I'm aware there is a fine line between the two.

I am only 150 pages into the Mitford series and I absolutely love it. I heard that you have to get through the first book in order to appreciate the rest in the series. Really, you have to get through the first 25 pages. The only thing that's hard is the introduction of all these characters. Presumably, the author will stick only to those characters throughout the rest of the series, making the reader's job of memorizing less painful. I do find that I have to reread even as I'm reading to make sure I have the characters straight. It's complicated. But it's sure fun reading. Definitely not deep. It's the perfect ten minute novel - you can sit down and read it for ten minutes and then get up and do something else and then sit down again. Nothing so amazing as to glue your eyes to the page, but just enough light humor to keep you in your seat until you think of something else that needs to be done. It's a very easygoing book. Very non-intense after Taliesin. You might like it, you might not. I tend to think it's a book girls would like more than guys. It's cute. Merely the fact that I rarely use that word should convince you that it is. You're supposed to read it in your pajamas with a cup of tea and a blanket and light piano music playing while it's raining outside - moreso with this book than with pretty much any other, I think.

Anyone who enjoyed Lake Woebegon Days might enjoy this one. I never finished Lake for some reason, but this book is written in the same style only a whole lot better.

I usually don't give book reviews until I've finished the book, but I don't know if I'll have time to finish this one.

I went to the doctor today and got me some migraine medicine. She said if it doesn't work I have to go on birth control pills. Bleah. I've heard horrible things about those.

I then went and got a new pair of shoes because my old pair has holes and are grossly dirty and are falling apart at the seams. I threw them away. After I tossed them, my mom said, "so how many pairs of shoes do you have now?" I replied, "One." she just laughed. I don't even have dress shoes even though I really should get some. I just hate wearing them is all. They look bad on me and it's hard to find decent looking/fitting ones that don't have heels, since I refuse to wear high heels. So I always wear tennis shoes with my skirts - probably a big shocker for the Presbyterian church I play piano at every Sunday in Oregon!

I'm sitting here, typing, waiting for my mom to come back. We have to go into the HIghlands to pick up the van which is getting the transmission fixed, so that I can drive the car back and she'll drive the van. I think I"ll do some shopping while I'm up there.

Aha, she's back!

-Amber

Now it's later in the day. Mom took the van home and said I could do some shopping with the car. First I went to Debbi's house because I had left some cocoa at her house a while back and I wanted to pick it up (Snow is expected in Portland on Friday!!!!!). She looked really tired and I asked if I could get her anything at the store, and she laughed and said "A decaf mocha, just kidding." But of course I got her one anyway! Ah, it's so nice to be able to do nice things for other people.

Then I went to two thrift stores and bought yarn - a fair sized amount. Four nice purpleish skeins and an ugly yellow one that seems to be a big favorite for hats now, all for 2.50, and then a bag of various shades of white balls for 5.00. I had a nice conversation with the Hispanic lady at the first one (they only hire Hispanics at the Union thrift store) about the creaky door and how there wasn't much business.

I came home. It is so, so wonderful to be able to drive alone in a car. Never take that for granted if you do. I found myself praying. It's so much easier to pray when you're alone in a car. It was beautiful weather today. Driving up to Highlands, oh! It's impossible to describe. I had a sort of flashback about how this road was the same one we've always driven up to go to Highlands ever since I was really really...well, ever since I was born, really. And the sun was out, and the shadows were perfect, and I was looking at all the new buildings and also at the old buildings like the Bingo place with a crooked B. I was pretty much flooded with nostalgia. It was great. At the same time it was really sad - it's pretty pathetic when you finally feel like you're home after two and a half weeks of being home, and then you have to leave the next day.

Oh well.

I am tired. Why didn't I get myself some coffee while I was getting Debbi some?

I found a Starbucks card in the car. I hope it's mine.

Except, I think it's Melody's. That's what she wanted for Christmas - a Starbucks card, so she could go and get hot chocolate there. She turns eight in a week and a half...

There's only one break for spring semester!! And that's THREE months away! March 21-28. How shall I survive? I sure hope someone comes and visits me, otherwise I think I'll die. Lots of emails, lots of phone calls, letters, packages, and visits!

I'm hungry, but Mom's cooking dinner. She cooks so good. I'm worried about when I get married, because I can't cook all that much stuff. I make good biscuits. That's about it. And tomato soup, but that's Campbell's and doesn't really count. Neither do sandwiches. I can make quiche but I don't know if it's any good, and our recipe doesn't have onions in it.

Someday I'd like to marry a guy who likes bell peppers (but will live without them for my sake) and go through a cookbook and make everything in it. The reason I can't do the cookbook thing now is because there is so much stuff with bell peppers in it and I would feel like I was cheating if I skipped them.

Then I could take the best recipes and copy them out and put them into some computer program. Is there a recipe program? It seems there is...Mom used to have some Julia Child computer program for recipes. Hm. Okay.

Last week, I got my hair cut professionally. No more wake-up-Saturday-morning-in-becca's-house-and-can't-find-the-brush-so-ask-becca-to-cut-my-hair spontaneous moments ("somebody help me! I'm being spontaneous! Mardi Gras! Woooooooooo!" - Truman Show). My aunt said she'd pay for a cut by her hairdresser so I said sure, why not. (My aunt is in the business of making me more girly, by the way - I flatly refused to have my colors done at the mall so I could learn how to apply makeup.) The lady started asking me what I wanted done to my hair, and I basically kept telling her I really didn't care, so she got all excited like hairdressers do (but she was professional looking so I didn't take that as a bad sign) and now my hair, if I do say so myself, actually looks pretty darn nice. So there. It's only a little bit shorter. In fact, it's hardly noticeable. I just got some layers and stuff. Fancy fancy.

Oh, I must talk about yesterday - not for the sake of our eager readers, but in order to document the happenings of Break so I can go back and read about them during the next three months.

Well, I've been kind of sick with a minor cold so I wasn't feeling that well yesterday. becca called at, oh, I don't know. It doesn't matter what time she called. Then she came over to pick me up, but she had to wait half an hour for my mom to get home since there was no one to watch Mel. We ate grapefruit. We talked about how I was giving up on my puzzle because I felt sick and irritated and depressed because my throat was hurting so much. Then we went to her house and listened to "The Giraffe, the Pelly, and Me," which is a book on tape we picked up at the library on a whim the day before. It's by Roald Dahl. It's not terribly good. Then we went to Blockbuster (no more late fees! I love that commercial, even though I don't have an account at Blockbuster) and on the way to Blockbuster we were deciding what to get for dinner for the whole family for under five bucks because that was all we had, and I said "Albertson's has Cup-a-Noodles on sale for a quarter" and she started laughing and I said "Why are you laughing?" and she said "I don't know, I guess it just sounded funny" and then I started laughing because it was funny that she was laughing for absolutely no reason and we just giggled a lot and it was really dumb but really funny. And neither of us had had coffee! Then we got to Blockbuster and got Truman Show. Then we went to Albertson's and got frozen pizza. Red Baron. Better than Tombstone. Then we watched a few tv Spongebob episodes while the pizza was cooking, then we started Truman Show. About halfway through the movie becca started being completely silly and idiotic which made me the same way (utterly unfair) and caused me to hit her several times.

We watched two Spongebob episodes on that dvd that I still haven't seen, called the "Christmas" dvd but with only like one Christmas episode on it. Then becca took me home. I stayed up late reading.

Okay! All done. I need to pack. Actually the packing is well under way - it's the laundry that's really pressing right now. Everyone else's clothes are in all the bins, the dryer, and the washing machine. Stupidly, yesterday when Mom told me to take my clothes out of the dryer, I was feeling too sick to fold them so I threw them in a heap on the bathroom floor. Now they're cold and wrinkled and very unsatisfactory to fold. I want to redry them to take out the wrinkles but, as I said before, there are someone else's clothes in the dryer. And the other members of my family don't have to have all their clothes packed to go tomorrow. Hmf.

-Amber