100 Book Challenge

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to read. Growing up I read just about anything I could get my hands on; I was usually so desperate for title that found myself wandering the library shelves looking for interesting covers. (A terribly age-appropriate way to go about finding reading material, I promise). In the last couple years I found myself in the opposite situation: so many books, so little time! Between blogs, friends, and the super awesome librarians I worked with at Utah State, I was always hearing about something I was dying to get my eyeballs on. Of course, college wasn't really conducive to my bookworm lifestyle and I could never keep up. I had lists everywhere: on scraps of paper, in my journal, scribbled in the back of my planner. I could never keep track of anything for long. For awhile I tried to keep a little notebook--both for reading material and as a reading log-- but the pencil always smeared, and half the time I couldn't remember what the book was supposed to be about. I hated going to all the effort of tracking a book down when half the time it wasn't something I was in the mood for just then (the Logan Library has a frustratingly outdated system, and carried maybe half of the titles I wanted).

Enter my favorite website: Shelfari. It lets me keep two lists: one of books I want to read, and one of books I've already read. When I come across a book that looks interesting, I add it to my shelf. Then when I'm ready for something new, I browse through the cover art and maybe click on the book to read a jacket's description, and reviews from other members (I keep the maximum number of holds at the Hunter Library so I always have something coming in). When someone wants to know if I have any books to suggest, I can go to my shelf (where I can tag, rate, and review each book) and find something in the right genre. And I love having a record of the books that suck up so much of my time.

I decided this year to join one of the many groups on Shelfari and challenge myself to read 100 books this year. That's an average of two books a week and right now I'm even a little ahead-- which is good, since there's no way to keep up the pace come fall. By setting this goal, I've somehow given myself permission to stop feeling guilty about spending time with a book, and instead I've worked it into my schedule as a priority. I love letting myself get lost in a good story, but I'm also mixing in a good bit of non-fiction and I'm empowered by a lot of what I read, too. It's a nice change of pace from textbooks and lesson plans.

I've put a widget up on the left side that shows my most recent reads off my Shelfari list. I'm not sure how I feel about displaying all my nerdy interests, but there you go. It's a big part of my life and I want to put it out there.

Are you on Shelfari? Add me as a friend so I can see what you're reading, too!

Not Really My Idea of A Vacation

I have an an awesome aunt and uncle who are spending some serious time at a so-called cabin this summer. This week was an extended family get-together near their place, so my parentals collected their children and we headed to beautiful Island Park. For those of you not familiar with it, Island Park can be found in the Eastern portion of that great state, the one and only Idaho. It looks a lot like this:


And also a lot like this:


These pictures really don't begin to do it justice . The lake is breathtaking and the forest is lush and green. So green that it really catches me off guard, being that my part of the world really does count as a desert. It helped that it RAINED most of the week (let's remember that the Winders were occupying a tent) and when it finally stopped raining, well, we'll talk about that later.

The main purpose of the trip to Island Park (besides the family bondage) was to do this:


My grandfather has a nice set of ATV's that he generously shares with his family and we get to go play on these babies a few times a year. I'm not the biggest fan of four wheeling-- it's fun but not a big deal-- but the trails were nice and muddy (again with the RAIN) and so the one ride I was able to fit in turned out to a great big splashfest of the dirty kind.


This picture doesn't really show the muddy mess we were both covered in, but you get the idea. I LOVED it. The sun came out for a few short hours, and Isaac and I went off to do our own thing. It turns out that riding is a lot more enjoyable when you're not sharing an ATV and riding in a convoy of 15 or so people.

We ended up spending a good part of the five day trip huddled up under a tent trying to stay warm. Good attitudes abounded:


Yup, the joy and rejoicing were everywhere. I did manage to get through three really good books, even if I did most of the reading while hiding in the parked car.

The last night we were there the clouds parted and gave us a beautiful goodbye:

That was the last of the good feelings, because about this time Isaac was the first of several victims to fall prey to some nasty bug. It hit me during the night and by the morning of our departure my sisters and dad were starting to go, too. And then I looked out the window and what did I see?
Snow. THREE INCHES of SNOW. It turned out to be FIVE INCHES of SNOW by the time we left, because Isaac had been feeling so horrible that we spent that night at my parent's cabin, and I still had to go pack up our stuff from the TENT in the SNOW. Apparently, someone in charge missed the memo that it's JUNE. And I know that part of the world isn't exactly toasty yet, but the SNOW just kind of left me bitter. And the stomachache didn't help, either.

This is what it looked like when we left town, all four of us sick with various ailments.

They actually had the snow plows out, it was that bad. I wasn't happy but Chelle and Isaac were truly miserable... it was a long drive home. We're still recovering.

And that was our vacation. It wasn't really horrible-- we had a fun day of window shopping and lunch out in West Yellowstone, Isaac got in a couple of extra rides, and it was nice to be in a quiet, pretty place with family to talk to. But somehow it's the bad parts that are sticking in my memory.

I have a MILLION things I have been meaning to post here: the Holi Festival, our trip to Moab, a couple of weddings, our new house, and all of the new-to-us things we've been acquiring to fill it. I finally dug the camera cable out of a box last week (I think we might be all the way unpacked!) and offloaded all our pictures; I even organized them into nice little folders for each post. I was all ready to start in on them and what happens? The computer DIES. The pictures are still there-- my genius husband put them in a safe place (some special kind of drive that I don't want to understand because that's exactly why I keep him and my dad around, to save me from dealing with that kind of stuff). So they're not lost forever but they are lost for the time being, while we wait for software drivers to come in the mail so Isaac can make one last brave attempt to save the desktop.

In the meantime we're limited to my laptop-- which the perfect computer for surfing the internet and catching up on other people's blogs, but its a good ten years old and even if it had any of my pictures on it, it just doesn't have the memory to load even one .jpg onto this website. If the desktop can't be brought back to life I don't know what we'll do (homework doesn't work on the laptop, either, so come September it will be a need instead of a want) but for now I have to keep putting off all the stuff I'd rather be writing about.

So, that's my excuse, for now. Just so you know.