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Mar
14
The Sunday Salon 3.14.10
2010 at 12pm Posted by Rebecca Joines Schinsky
This is one of my least favorite days of the year. I detest “spring forward” as fervently as I love Fall Back Weekend, and I want my hour of sleep back, damn it! It will take me at least a week to adjust to the time change, and even though I love having extra daylight through the summer months, it does not feel worth it right now.
But there’s nothing I can do about that, so I’ll just have to move on.
If last week was the week that Twitter went purple, this was the week it went menstrual. I reviewed Elissa Stein & Susan Kim’s fantastic book Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation, and the conversations that have followed have been nothing short of fascinating. I’m giving away three copies of the book, and the entries so far are funny, insightful, touching, and empowering. We’ve been talking about “oversharing” on Twitter, but I’m beginning to think we need to re-frame the conversation and emphasize that we shouldn’t think of frank discussions about a natural process as oversharing. For the most part, the conversations I’ve seen and participated in have been mature, respectful, and informative, even when we’ve disagreed with each other. And there is something to be said for a book that gets people talking this way.
It’s been a busy week, and my brain is fried after a fantastic educator roundtable on books and media at my partner indie Fountain Bookstore yesterday. Wonderful ideas were shared, new ideas were born, and I came away with even greater respect and admiration for the people who dedicate their lives to inspiring young people to love the written word. I am very lucky to call many of them my friends, and I’ll need more time to wrap my head around everything we discussed yesterday before I can recap it here without gushing.
I finished Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History last night and look forward to reviewing it this week. I’ll be spending my extra lazy Sunday with one of my all-time favorites, Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, which I’ll be reading for the fourth (or fifth?) time for the readalong I’m co-hosting with Florinda and Heather.
So, that’s my Sunday. I’m off to whip up a late breakfast and try to convince myself not to get back in bed. What are you up to today?
No related posts.
Well, today I’m reading Sherlock Holmes as well as a sort of self-help book. You, Florinda and Heather, though, are tempting me with The Sparrow. I was just mentioning to Florinda that I hadn’t clicked on the link last week when she mentioned it, but now that I have, I’m intrigued.
Oh, and I’m so with you on hating “Spring”-ing forward. Ugh.
I hate springing forward myself. As much as I like having some extra daylight in the evening, I so miss driving to work in the light which I got to do for about a week and now won’t get to for some time. The worst thing, though, is one time when the time changed I was in England, and their time changed while I was there, but didn’t change here until after I’d been home a week – so I lost two hours that year and only got one back with the “fall back.” I’m still kind of bitter… Do you think if I went to the UK this fall they would give me my hour back?
Oh, I think The Sparrow might be right up your alley, and I hope you’ll join us. Even if you can’t get to it in time for Heather’s half-way discussion this Tuesday, you’ll have two more weeks before the final discussion on the 30th.
I’m so eager to read your review of FLAWLESS. I’ve always loved stories about diamond heists and fine art thefts.
Today I’ve begun the first chapter of my next novel. It feels soooooo good to be hitting the keyboard again. Other than that, my Sunday is a lazy one–my husband is going to make dinner. Yay.
It is such a gorgeous day where I am today, so I’m willing to overlook the lost hour of sleep – although sitting in the sun on the back deck with puppy girl made me sleepy all over again. I read a book a day this past week as the university I teach at was on Spring Break – yea! So I am taking a break. I can’t seem to get past the first few pages of anything I opened last night or today. It’s just too darn pretty after such an awful winter.
I watched the movie Flawless and enjoyed it. I too like heist movies. This one was really pretty clever, I thought.
I LOATHE springing ahead as do all 3 of my girls. (My middle one just started her college spring break, so she’s pretty happy!) My husband always says it’s no big deal, but for some reason, it is. It just is — it takes several days to adjust to the change and the only upside is that it’s lighter later. (On the other hand, I get up early to exercise, and I was kind of enjoying the brightening 5:45 a.m. sky, which is now delayed another month.) Oh well. Yesterday it rained and was chilly all day. Today — sunshine and 50! So life could be worse. I’m getting lots of chores done, pesky things, like balancing the checkbook. One chore involved returning library books, and when I checked the “Hot Read” shelf I snagged the new Robert Parker! (It’s “Split Image.” So I was pretty happy about that. Another chore is dealing with my overstuffed (and I mean overstuffed!) inbox. I finally decided I needed professional help, so to speak, so I have turned to Master Your Workday Now
by Michael Linenberger. It’s about more than e-mail — it’s also about sorting tasks effectively, and creating difference zones into which to sort those tasks. Very good stuff. As I said, I’m trying to deal with e-mail first, so I’ve been focusing on that — the book teaches you how to overcome e-mail overload using new, effective e-mail approaches. One of his tips: unless it’s urgent, don’t deal with the e-mail on your first read-through. You go all the way to the bottom of the inbox, and then sort the e-mails into various tasks, with numbers assigned to tasks. Let me just say that I have a LOT of filing to get to the bottom of my in-box, but I now have a system! So I’m feeling inspired.
Have not heard of “Flawless.” But I’m enjoying the past — got the first season of “Scarecrow and Mrs. King,” from the ’80s, on DVD and have watched the first 4 episodes. Such fun.
Yeah, I’m grousing about that too. And I forgot there for awhile, until I was clacking away on my computer this morning and realized the time looked wrong. I am attempting to get all my chores done today in preparation for the next two weeks of hell. Gone are the days of relaxing on the weekends for awhile I guess! While I was choring, at least I was listening to the audio of Mystic River!
I have enjoyed all the conversation around Flow, too
I also wish I had my act together to read The Sparrow with you guys, but I think my friend and I are going to start reading it late this month or early next month, so I’ll be missing it, sadly. But I’ll definitely try to come back to your posts on it when I am done reading!
I meant to read more of THE SPARROW today, but I worked on my posts for my Blogiversary and your FLOW giveaway instead.
(The FLOW post will be up tomorrow.) I also volunteered to take my stepdaughter shopping for jeans; it was either that, or stay in the house with two 10-years-olds (my stepson and his friend) playing Guitar Hero for hours.
I haven’t replied to Unfinished’s comment on my Salon post yet, but I agree with you that the book is probably right up his alley.
And “Spring Forward Day” is my least favorite day of the year – but at least it’s also Pi Day, and I have two pies for us to enjoy today
.
I hate springing forward so much that as it approaches I consider moving somewhere where they don’t do it. And of course this was a Sunday where we had to get up early- for a Baptism. Church was quite empty. I’m sure most people slept in. Even the priest was yawning.
I’m enjoying the Flow discussion but don’t think I’m going to share on my blog. Although I had no problems sharing on forums when I was trying to get pregnant. Menstruation is a different thing altogether when you want to get pregnant and can’t. It can become an obsession.
I am so grouchy this morning. I wish we just didn’t change time, ever. On top of the difficulties with me, myself and I, I also have children that I have to literally drag out of bed when we go forward. My son walked around like a zombie for awhile but he was okay. My daughter? Not so lucky. Shoes thrown, socks thrown… I have to say though, I know exactly how she feels.
Reading about the roundtable just gave me a wonderful idea for a post–involving teachers so I’ll wait to bug them until they’re on spring break in a couple of weeks. I was raised by two teachers so I’m always happy to see them get a pat on the back!