Swimming Studies

 

I recently finished the book Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton (on (and lent to me by) R.'s recommendation). I recommend it to you as well. It's mostly a memoir, but I say mostly because it is quite different from other memoirs I have read. It's much more a series of vignettes about Shapton's time as a competitive swimmer (she twice made it to the Canadian Olympic Trials (1988 and 1992) but never to the Olympics) and some on her life post-swimming. There is no clear chronological narrative and sometimes she would give only a few details about something that I really wish she had written pages about, like her relationship with her husband and why she was living in London for several months, and more about her mom and this comment her mom made at her wedding. That said, one of my favourite parts of the book is the section where she includes photographs of her bathing suits and writes little blurbs about them like she where she wore it, where she got it, etc. Shapton is primarily a visual artist - she paints, is an illustrator, and used to be the art director for various newspapers - and that came out in her book too, especially in her section near the end where she included paintings/sketches of many swimming pools she has swum in. It made me think of all the swimming pools I've swum in. So for the rest of this post, I am going to use Swimming Studies as my inspiration and talk about my own favourite pools, and bathing suits.

Last June, A. came to visit me in Montreal. His visit was short but we had a fabulous Friday evening and all day Saturday together. On Saturday morning we hiked up to the top of the mountain. In the afternoon, A. kindly invited D., K. and I to spend the afternoon at the rooftop pool of his hotel. It was probably my favourite day of the summer and one of my most favourite days ever. We all had such a great time just tanning and swimming. It was so sunny and hot and the view from the rooftop was really nice. The pool was just a normal rectangle shape but very blue and I just felt super happy and super relaxed. Hmmm I guess this is less about that pool being my favourite pool and more about that day being my favourite day. But it did involve a pool so I thought it fit here. Here is a picture. It doesn't do the pool justice but it gives the general idea.

I've been in countless other hotel pools but most of them blur together for me. I was impressed with Shapton's memory when it comes to hotel pools. She describes in detail the art deco swimming pool in the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa and now I really want to swim in it!! Next time I go to Ottawa I'll either have to stay at the Chateau Laurier or try to sneak into the pool :)

Chateau Laurier in Ottawa Swimming Pool

Berkeley had nice swimming pools, which I wish now I had taken more advantage of. L. and I went swimming a few times in the Strawberry Canyon (I love that name!) pool. The few times I was there it was just about fun swimming - no one was doing lengths and it was really packed. It's located in Strawberry Canyon which is this green canyon behind the stadium and has a really nice green lawn where you can lie out both before and after swimming. Right on campus is the Hearst Pool, which is gorgeous. It has tiles and statues and looks more like some ancient Greek or Roman pool. It's grand and fancy. (See picture below). I only went swimming there once but in retrospect, I should have taken advantage of the year round nice weather and gone swimming outside more.

Hearst Pool, UC Berkelely

So much of Shapton's book was about her relationship to swimming and swimming has always been a sport with which I had a particular relationship. I learned to swim really young and was on the swim team at my elementary school, placing either first or second in the 25 metres breaststroke at the city finals in grades 4, 5 and 6. I was fast at swimming and I loved it. But then I got older, went through puberty and wasn't as fast. In elementary school I had always been distinguished for my speed in breaststroke but in high school, I was friends with 3 other girls on the team (which, by the way, anyone could join... no try outs) L., H. and L. Funnily enough, H., L. and I all had the same best stroke: breaststroke and we seemed to go back and forth in terms of who was fastest. But it wasn't like when I was 10, 11 and 12 and was always the fastest at my school. Even in high school, while on some level I must have liked swim team, I don't remember liking it that much and I think I barely went in to practice or meets in my last year. When I left Toronto for Berkelely, I rarely went swimming. I could probably count on my two hands the number of times I went swimming while in Berkelely (even though the pools were so nice & memorable). It wasn't until the summer of 2008 that all that changed.

I decided then, to take up swimming. For two weeks during August 2008, I would swim 100 "lengths" (more like widths because the pool is small) in my backyard pool. When I got back to Austin, I was determined to swim on a regular basis. And I did! For the next 8 months I swam 2-3 times per week, in the early morning usually getting into the pool around 7 or 7:15 am. There were never that many people there at that time and quite often I would have a lane to myself. I got really into it and really enjoyed going. I was steadily increasing the number of lengths I could do and I really enjoyed being in the water. I mostly swam in the indoor pool, and I'll always love it just because I was happy swimming there. The UT Austin gym also had a really nice outdoor pool which I would swim in sometimes too. But almost always it was the indoor pool. I'd always have such a sense of accomplishment on my walk home from the pool. Sadly, I didn't really continue swimming once I left Austin. I tried to go a few times at the pool at Hart House in Toronto but it was always so crowded and I didn't get a good feeling from the pool. So I stopped. In Montreal I never started - not sure why. Partly because the thought of going outside in the winter with wet hair is so unappealing and partly because I am into step more and only have so much time. But I do hope to take up swimming again eventually. I just need to find the right pool. 

I have also always loved backyard pools. Something about having a swimming pool in your own backyard is so cool. I love the pool in my backyard and which I had a picture to put on this post. I like how it has a slope to the deep end and doesn't just quickly drop off. I have lots of great memories of swimming in it, especially with A., E. and L. in high school. I need to swim in it more though! Reading Shapton's book I wish I had more favourite pool memories or that I could clearly point to a specific pool and describe so many of its features and say this is my favourite pool. (Although one of my very favourite swimming pools is in Mont Tremblant, but since my next post is going to be about Tremblant I'll mention the pool there.)  I've swum in hundreds of pools probably starting with my swimming lessons as a little kid, and I wish I could remember some of them more.

Now moving on to bathing suits. All of my bathing suits (except the one Speedo I have for "serious" (ie. lengths) swimming) are from J Crew. I got my first J Crew Bathing Suit in the summer of 2004 (a pink with white polka dots one piece that ties at the neck) which I still wear today. I most distinctly remember wearing it on the beach in Vina del Mar in Chile when L. and I took the bus there from Santiago one Sunday in February 2005. Whenever I wear it now, I feel like I could be one of those vintage pin-up girls. If I were in a calendar, I'd want to be the month of either January or April or May or June or July. Unfortunately, that bathing suit is at my house in Toronto so I don't have a picture of it. About two years ago, I got another one piece from J Crew. This one has a paisley print and makes me feel a bit like Marilyn Monroe. It can either be worn strapless or with a thin band that goes around the neck. I really like it and have gotten lots of compliments. I wore it last June at A.'s hotel's rooftop pool.

I have three J Crew bikinis. The first is a simple black one I ordered in February 2005 and which my mom delivered to me when she came to visit me in Santiago in May of that year. I wanted a black bikini because I think black is a classic colour and because I think black bikinis look good. There is a picture of my mom standing on a beach in Barbados when she was about 30 or 31 wearing a black bikini which I first saw as a little kid. I would sometimes try on that bikini and always thought black was the way to go. I've worn this black one so much it's starting to get thin and I'm probably going to have to stop wearing it soon but I just love it.

My next J Crew bikini purchase was a bright blue bandeau that can be worn with or without thin strap that goes around neck. I liked this one a lot more when I first bought it in 2009 than I do now, but it's still very nice and I should wear it more.

Finally, in 2010 I bought a purple bikini that also ties at the neck and which I really like. I love the colour. My most memorable time wearing it is in the pool and steam room at the La Source Aqua Club in Mont Tremblant. I love steam rooms and it was funny to leave the steam room and see that my purple bikini top looked as if I had been swimming but really it was just wet from the steam. 

In writing this I realize I do have quite the bathing suit collection. I am sorry the bathing suit pictures aren't better - Shapton had hers on a model which looked better. But alas, this was fun to write and put together and I hope you enjoyed reading/looking at it.

From Swimming Studies

It's the end of the world as we know it

Even though I was 99.9% sure that the Mayan Apocalypse wasn't going to happen, I was still a bit anxious for December 21st to come and go this year. I knew the world was going to still be there on the morning of the 22nd, but I just wanted to get to that point. I remember the summer I was 9, some other kid at a summer day camp I was attending told me that the world was going to end the next day at 3 pm. It was so specific, which made it even scarier, and perhaps explains why I was quick to believe him. Or maybe I was just gullible. Regardless, I kept thinking about it the next day, which was a Saturday. But then my mom took me to a movie at the Capitol Movie Theatre on Yonge Street near our house (which is now an event theatre that hosts weddings & other fancy events). I don't remember what movie we saw but I know that it engrossed me enough to completely forget about the imminent end of the world. When we left the Capitol and started walking home, I realized it was past 3 pm and the world was still there, seemingly the same as always. I felt great relief.

From the ages of 14 to about 19, Armageddon was my favourite movie. From ages 14- to maybe 16 I even had a Ben Affleck poster on my wall which I purchased at the Rogers video store on Yonge Street just north of Davisville station. L. had told me about it (she had one too) and where to buy it so one day after school I got off the subway a stop early, bought the poster and that night went to sleep with Ben Affleck staring down at me. When I was 14/15 I was obsessed with Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Affleck (who dated for a while! my Hollywood dream match at the time) and I wonder if it's because I liked them so much back in 1998/1999 and am now really embarrassed about it that I don't particularly like either of them now.

Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow

It wasn't this exact poster but somewhat similar.

 Although it's probably not my favourite movie anymore, I still love Armageddon. I just watched a few clips of it on youtube (the final 8 minutes and the scene where Bruce Willis tells Liv Tyler he's staying behind on the asteroid) and I cried. Every time I have watched it, I've cried. I think Liv Tyler is really beautiful and I think she and Ben Affleck made a good couple. I particularly like the scenes where they show people around the world coping with the fact that the world is going to end (I remember they show Paris/the Eiffel Tower) and then celebrating at the end when the world doesn't end. That connection with the rest of the world - at quite possibly the end of the world - always seemed really important.

I find end of the world scenarios generally pretty terrifying. I worry sometimes about what would happen if something awful happened - be it a natural disaster, an asteroid from outer space, or a hostile government take over/beginning of a terrible dictatorship - and what I would do. I feel certain the first thing that would happen if the world were in chaos would be that the internet would be shut down and there'd be no phone service and I wouldn't know what to do if that happened. I'd mostly just want to be at my house in Toronto, but what if I couldn't get there? K. jokes that she'd take her dad's guns and go live in the woods in BC. That sounds like a good plan for her but so implausible for me. I just hope I never have to confront these things.

Last January, a few days after my birthday, D. and I watched the movie Melancholia. Big spoiler alert coming up in case you still want to watch it and want to be surprised. I found it quite disturbing and while I would recommend it, it's not a movie I want to see again. I kept thinking about it for quite a while after I saw it and the ending just haunted me. In the movie a planet called Melancholia is on course to collide with the earth. Charlotte Gainsbourg, her husband Kiefer Sutherland, her sister Kirsten Dunst and her son are all at her large, somewhat isolated castle like house in the countryside somewhere. Kiefer Sutherland is an amateur astronomer and spends a good part of the movie trying to convince his wife and son that Melancholia will definitely not hit the earth. When it becomes clear that he was wrong and that Melancholia is going to hit the earth, he takes poison and kills himself. He doesn't bother saying goodbye to his wife or son and his wife finds him dead in the barn with their horses. What most struck - and disturbed - me was their isolation. It seemed like the 4 (and then 3) of them were the only people left on earth. They never turned on the TV or listened to the radio or tried to connect with anyone else. Kirsten Dunst - who is really depressed throughout the movie - was the most accepting of the world ending. Charlotte Gainsbourg, when she first realized the end was imminent and that her husband was dead - grabbed her kid and tried to drive into town but then realized it was futile and gave up, returning to their isolated fortress. I knew that in the face of the world ending I'd react a lot like her and her panic really scared me.

Looking at Melancholia

In the end, the three of them just sat outside in a circle and talked and waited for Melancholia to hit the earth. Even though I know they are very different movies, I kept thinking about how Armageddon showed all those scenes of the world being united in fear and hope. Here, we never saw how the rest of the world was handling this. Their isolation at the end affected me so much. It just seemed so bleak and frightening. If the world were to end I would much rather be in a city and near other people, than out there alone.

On The Other Side

 
I read this memoir a few years ago called The Sisters Antipodes by a woman named Jane Alison. Jane was born in Canberra, Australia but spent most of her childhood living in different parts of the world because her dad was a diplomat. At some point when she was under 10, her family (mom, dad, older sister, Jane) were back in Australia and became really good friends with an American family whose dad was also a diplomat (mom, dad, two daughters). The parents ended up switching partners, and the daughters ended up losing dads as Jane and her sister moved to the US with their new stepfather and their mom, and the two other girls stayed in Australia with their mom and Jane's dad. Read it - it's really good! (The amount of similarities between the families are very strange. Both women/moms end up getting pregnant again and both had sons born within a few days of each other.) But why this whole story is related to this post is because Jane returns to Australia a couple of different times during the book and she always talks about the plane rides and drawing maps of the voyages and trying to cross off all the time zones she was travelling through on the back of the Qantas napkin. I loved those parts of the book. I wish I had my copy of the book here (it's in Toronto) to give the exact quote but she wrote this line I just loved about always wishing she knew or could tell the exact moment the plane crossed the equator, so that she could know when she was back on the other side.

It wasn't until I was in Santiago that I realized the word (and country) "Ecuador" means equator in Spanish. C. visited Ecuador once and told me how the equator passes right through the country. She even went to a place where you can stand with one foot on one side of the equator and one foot of the other. So cool! It's like when you can stand on a state/province line and have your feet in two different places at once. A long time ago when we were at school together, N. told me how in Basel, Switzerland, France, Germany and Switzerland all meet. He showed me a picture of himself standing in the exact spot the three countries meet. When I did my exchange to France in the winter/spring of 1999, my dad came to visit me at one point and we went to Switzerland. At N.'s recommendation I made us visit Basel and I also have a picture of me (wish I remembered where it is) of me standing at the place where the three countries meet.  Going back to Ecuador, I really want to visit the country, and specifically the equator one day.

In Paris, I knew this guy named P. who was from Bogotá. His sister J. came to visit during the summer and I hung out with them both a few times. I was telling them how much I loved the long long days and she told me that in Bogotá, because it's so close to the equator, it gets dark around 6 pm (give or take) the whole year. She said the dark would make her tired, and that sometimes she'd go to bed at 6:30 pm and sleep 12 hours until it got light again the next morning. It was so interesting to me that for her, being in Paris in May, June and July was not only an adjustment for the language, etc. etc. but also for the long long days when she was used to darkness by early evening. Having long days in the summer and short days in the winter is so engrained in my mind I don't think I could ever get used to the length of day and night being more or less the same the whole year through.

I like how Jane Alison called the Northern Hemisphere "the other side." It does sort of seem like the two hemispheres are other sides. At the end of our semester in Santiago, Chile, C. and I took a 2 week long trip to Argentina, with a 3 day side trip to Uruguay. While in Montevideo, we went to this museum about an Uruguyan artist named Joaquín Torres García. In the gift shop there was this amazing poster (see picture below this paragraph) of an upside down (to me, but not to some people from South America) map of South America. You can't see it in this picture but there was a quote on the map that said "nuestro norte es el sur" (our north is the south). I've always liked that because it shifts the accepted centres of power and says that just because people in the Northern Hemisphere believe something does not mean those in the Southern Hemisphere necessarily believe it too.

I have new found affection for the Southern Hemisphere. I think my dislike of Chile in 2005 caused me to not like the Southern Hemisphere in general that much, mostly because I pretty much only knew Chile in the Southern Hemisphere and because June was such a dark, cold and awful month in Santiago, so different from June in the Northern Hemisphere. But now I like the Southern Hemisphere so much more. I've realized that just because I don't like Chile, I love Argentina (especially Buenos Aires) and it is also in the Southern Hemisphere. I've been there in its winter (July) and I still loved it. I also really liked New Zealand and it is also 'on the other side.' I'm glad to discover the great things about the Southern Hemisphere. I think it's so fascinating that the globe does have these two sides that are opposites of each other. And I still really want to go to Ecuador (and Bogotá, and look below in Uganda too!) and see the middle.

Stickers for Everyone!

I was a great sticker collector as a kid. I had multiple sticker albums, their whereabouts I wish I knew now. It would be so fun to find them, and to see how much (or how little) stickers have changed between now and then. I don’t remember them that well but I do know that I liked to organize them by fuzzy stickers and shiny stickers. I think I liked the fuzzies better, which is interesting because now I think I prefer shinies. I used to bring my sticker albums to school and would sometimes make trades with friends.

From about aged 10 through age 23, I used stickers occasionally, but definitely not regularly. Then, one day in the fall of 2007 I was in a Target in Austin and saw some Disney Princess stickers and knew I just had to buy them. Thus my love of stickers was reignited. To my delight, I discovered in the early spring of 2010 that the Sandylion sticker company had a factory store in Markham, Ontario a two minute drive (almost directly across the street) from the Seneca campus in Markham where I worked. On the day of my students’ final in April, I went to Seneca early so that I could go to the Sandylion store. Almost three years later I feel in some ways that I have barely made a dent in the stickers I bought that day. Well, that’s not totally true. I bought some Princess Tiana stickers which I used up pretty quickly and a few other Disney stickers but those ones were in sheets. I made the mistake of buying entire rolls of stickers (though to be fair that was what was for sale) and those take a long time to get through.

I’m not surprised I bought so many that day though since I am always on the look out for stickers. The Japanese make awesome stickers, which is not surprising since as I wrote about before, Tokyo has the best stationery store I have ever seen. That store had lots of cool stickers including some of a Japanese version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (which I of course bought.) In retrospect, I should have bought more stickers but it had been less than a month since I had gone to the Sandylion factory store and so I knew I really didn’t need that many more. In June 2011, I went to New York City to hang out primarily with L. and J. The first day I was there though, I spent a really fun day with N. (who was in town for the week) doing lots of things including going to this Japanese stationery/book store and buying stickers. I bought two packs of stickers – one exclusively of panda bears (really cute!) and the other a mixture of animals. Even though I am not a huge animal lover in real life, I love animal stickers. They are so cute! I have some fuzzy green frog ones I bought at the Sandylion store that I really like too.
 

In addition to animal stickers, I also like flower stickers, especially roses. Fruit stickers are really great, especially strawberry stickers. I even stuck one on my laptop. I also have lots of heart stickers which I really enjoy too. Then of course, the most ubiquitous stickers in my current collection (no more albums for me; now they stay on their sheets or rolls until I use them) are Disney Princesses. I have both sheets with only one princess – like Snow White stickers (which will include the dwarves and the prince), Ariel stickers (which always include Flounder but actually, interestingly, never include Prince Eric) – and sheets with all the princesses.  

Prince Eric

What I have come to appreciate over the past five years in which I have continually been buying and using stickers is that stickers are absolutely not just for kids. One time when I was at Central Market in Austin, the cashier’s nametag was all decorated with stickers. I told her I really liked it and she told me that she had had to decorate her nametag cause she didn’t know what else to do with her stickers! So while stickers are definitely liked by adults and kids, I think adults have a harder time finding use for their stickers. I almost exclusively use my stickers to decorate envelopes (and occasionally postcards although I’ll usually only just put one or max two) when I send letters. I like to think that the post people find my envelopes very cheerful. I love decorating envelopes and lots of people I’ve sent sticker covered mail too have told me how much they like them. Just looking through my current sticker collection always makes very cheerful. If you haven’t used stickers in a while, go buy some. I feel confident they will add some cheer to your life too.

Christmas Decoration Ennui

As a little girl I was always so so excited for Christmas. Like most kids, I remember having difficulty falling asleep on Christmas Eve and waking up super early on Christmas morning. I loved going down the stairs to the living room where my mom had laid out all my presents. Over the past maybe 10 even 15 years, I’ve gotten less and less into Christmas. I still like it in a general way – because it’s a break, because I usually go on a holiday somewhere warm (I remember when I was little always finding it so odd that the hotels we’d visit in the Caribbean would have Christmas trees. Warm tropical weather and Christmas trees just did not go together in my mind. All the Christmas carols about winter wonderlands had permanently ingrained in my mind the idea that Christmas trees belong in cold snowy environs), because Christmas lights are very pretty – and particularly I love seeing my aunt and uncle who drive to Toronto from Annapolis just before Christmas every year. My mom also makes the most delicious and amazing linzer torte (using her secret Hungarian recipe) every year. But to be honest, I don’t have any desire to participate in Christmas decorations, trees, etc. 

I actually feel guilty for not liking Christmas more because it is important to my mom, and because in a lot of ways it’s a very nice holiday. But at the same time, I feel no attachment to trees or decorations. Over the month of December, it seemed every store or restaurant I visited in Montreal had put up Christmas decorations. D. and I were eating at Burger de Ville (such good burgers! And vanilla milkshakes! If you’re in Montreal and like those things, go there! And thanks to H. for the recommendation!) recently and as we were putting on our coats to leave, I noticed with surprise that there were Christmas decorations. I remarked on this to D. and he replied along the lines of “what do you expect?/of course they do! It’s almost Christmas!” Not only was D. right, but I had to admit that the decorations were a nice touch. I think I have to accept that I am someone who has zero desire to put up Christmas decorations, yet enjoys admiring them.

To people who love Christmas what I am about to say probably sounds awful, but while I think Christmas trees are very pretty (especially with coloured lights and lots of ornaments) I don’t think I would mind if I didn’t have one. Maybe it’s just that right now I haven’t had to actually face a Christmas without a tree because my parents always get one. Hmmm, maybe I should take back my earlier statement. Maybe I would mind if we didn’t have one. When I eventually have my own house, then I will get a tree but for now, I am content with just occasionally seeing the tree and noting its prettiness without giving it much more thought. 

I’m the same with Halloween. No desire to put up decorations or dress up and I can’t remember the last time I was involved with carving a pumpkin. Although I do still distinctly remember and actually kind of like the smell and feel of pumpkin seeds being pulled out of the pumpkin. It’s not that I don’t like holidays or celebrating – I love Valentine’s Day because I love hearts, the colours pink and red, and heart shaped cookies with pink icing. I also love birthdays! I want to celebrate my own and all my friends’ birthdays every year. So I am into holidays, I’m just not into putting up decorations.

Regardless of my opinions on trees and decorations, I agree that the December holiday season is a wonderful time of year. Whether you are into Christmas decorations or not (or even celebrate Christmas), I hope you have a very happy holiday season!

Thoughts on Book Clubs

When I moved to Montreal at the end of August 2010, I was sad that I wasn't going to get to join A's book club. A. had just joined one when I left and it sounded really good. There were about 6-7 women and they met every 6 weeks to two months at a different person's house to discuss whatever book they had picked. A. has told me some of the books they've read and a lot of them have been books I've either read or have wanted to read. When I eventually do move back to Toronto, if that book club still exists, I am looking forward to joining it.

I have never been in a book club, and I am very curious about them. I wonder how much I would like them? I know I would like them if I could choose who exactly would be in it, but I am more hesitant about being in a book club with strangers. Suppose I don't get along with some of the people in it? Or find them annoying? (My desire to try one out outweighs my hesitation however, and so I will join A's if I am still invited.) I wish so much that 1. all of my favourite people and best friends lived in the same place and 2. that we could be in a book club together :)

I already do kind of have quasi-book clubs going on. For a while (and I guess it still exists but we haven't read a book in a really long time) I was in a celebrity book club with M. and E. We read really bad (but fun to read books) like Tori Spelling's So noTORIous and MommyWood. Then we'd go for Indian food and talk about the books. Hmmm, once I move back to Toronto we definitely need to get that book club back in full swing too. Once I received a letter from N. in which she expressed how much she liked "our informal book club." That made me so happy because I hadn't thought to label it like that but we do have a sort of informal book club going on! Every year I give N. a book for her birthday (which is soon, December 14th and I still haven't chosen which book I am going to give her this year!) and she usually gives me one for mine. I always try to read the book she gave me relatively soon after my birthday and then I love discussing it with her. In January 2006 I read the first of many books I've read by Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood - and to my delight later that spring I found out that N. was a big Murakami fan. I remember very clearly one bright sunny June day in the last June I spent in Berkeley meeting up with N. and going for a walk over all northside, including to the Berkeley Rose Garden, and having a long and wonderful conversation with her about Murakami.

Finally, S. and I really and truly have book ESP! I finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (which is one of my very favourite books) in early June 2007. I told S. about it the next time we talked on the phone, and was going to urge her to read it soon when she told me she had actually read it a few months earlier. The same thing happened this summer when I read Ann Patchett's latest book State of Wonder and wanted S. to read it too so we could discuss, only for her to tell me (again) that she already had earlier in the summer. I know the same thing has happened a few other times too. How cool! The best part is we can then discuss the book right away without having to wait for one of us to read it.

 

Another cool idea is what my friend H.'s sister N. did: she had a virtual book club where she and two friends would meet for bi-monthly gchats about a book they'd all read. That is a very good idea and something I might actually try to get going one day.

When I was in high school, I really liked Oprah's Book Club. In fact, in grade 12 I wrote a whole essay comparing different books from Oprah's Book Club, discussing which themes were present in all, etc. Sometimes when I would tell people I liked Oprah's Book Club picks or read articles about it, there was this underlying current of disdain. Some people (mostly male) dismissed Oprah's Book Club as having only lightweight books or books that only women would like (as opposed to the really serious and important books that men like to read). That kind of thinking still makes me angry! Especially because it couldn't be farther from the truth. I still think Jonathan Franzen is an arrogant and obnoxious person for criticizing Oprah's Book Club when his novel The Corrections was an Oprah pick. For reasons I can't fathom now I actually read The Corrections and for what it's worth, although I read it over 10 years ago, I can't remember a single thing about the book (which is not the case for plenty of other of books I read 10 years ago or longer.) Jonathan Franzen's dismay at being   associated with Oprah's Book Club just struck me as so ridiculous. A. (a different one than above) is a huge Oprah fan and told me about the interview Jonathan Franzen finally did give to Oprah a few years ago when (for whatever reason... Oprah is too nice!) Oprah chose his novel Freedom as a pick in her book club. A. told me that Jonathan Franzen had a good excuse for his behaviour (the excuse unfortunately now escapes me) and he and Oprah got along well. I still hold a grudge though (Oprah: why are you hugging him in the picture below?!?), and have zero desire to ever read Freedom.

 

The bottom line is that I love reading and I love discussing books with other people. And whether I am in a book club or not, I am always going to keep reading books and wanting to discuss them with others.

The best part about fridges? The magnets!

 While I think new modern kitchens are great, I find fridges without magnets so sad. The stainless steel fridges I've seen close up are always big and very nice and exude this clean, sleek look. But I really can't imagine ever having a kitchen with one. (Although check out this website -  it gives tips on how to get around the whole stainless steel no magnets thing.) I am just too attached to my magnets. I don't understand what the company who made the first stainless steel non-magnetic fridges was thinking. Wasn't there anybody there who stood up for magnets? Fridges without them are just too bare.

I'm not sure when my obsession with magnets started but it really is a full-blown obsession (although to be fair it has perhaps cooled a bit over the past year). I have so many magnets! They make kitchens seem cheerful and are also very fun to look at.  I like to buy them when I go on trips and so I have a cool collection from all over the world. I have also searched sites like Etsy and other random sites for magnets and have ordered them off the internet on multiple occasions. In addition to magnets with place names or pictures of the places I've visited and really liked, I also like magnets that mean something. For example, I have this cheesy magnet of a piece sign made out of flowers which I really like. S. gave me one while we were at Berkeley which is a picture of a woman and says "Talk to me..." I love that one! I have another one that says "Hearst College" which is the fictional university Veronica Mars attended. Unsurprisingly, I ordered that one online. From the same site, I ordered a black magnet that says "Louisiana is for Vampires" a shout out to Charlaine Harris and the wonderful vampires of Bon Temps, Louisiana. I also ordered magnets with pictures of Disney Princesses from someone on Etsy; and one of my favourite magnets is of Michelle Obama which I bought at the DC airport.

I have very mixed feelings about my current apt. The bathroom and kitchen are sooo small - like so small that I whenever I open the fridge I hit the pots that are hanging on a pot rack. I have gotten very very used to the sound of clanging pots and pans. My fridge is not too small but it's definitely smaller than all the fridges I've had in any other apt I've ever lived in (except Paris... which makes sense because I do think my apt is quite European. From the moment I found it it reminded me of apts I saw in Paris, except sadly not as nice :( ). All my magnets and pictures and all the things I had on the fridge in my old apt didn't even fit on this one, and what's worse is that because of how cramped the kitchen is D. (and sometimes me but to a much lesser extent) knocks magnets off the fridge and on to the floor. My poor magnets do not like it.

They, like I, dream about a gorgeous kitchen with huge windows letting in lots of light, a double sink with a window behind it so I can always look outside while doing the dishes, an island in the middle which I could use alternatively as extra counter space while cooking or as an extra table while eating, a double stove so I could be baking two different things at the same time, a breakfast nook right by the window with a table and comfortable chairs, and a big glorious fridge covered with magnets. One day...