resolutions

yes it is. the dreaded resolutions post. overdone? yes. but i'm doing it anyway.

i've never been one for resolutions. if i ever did attempt them, i've just thought them in my head and then went on with life. but with never writing them down it made them that much easier to forget. so i've decided it's time to put pen to paper (or i guess in this case fingers to keyboard) what i'd really like to accomplish in 2011. so bear with me here.

since i've missed the new year by oh, a month and a half. i'm calling them my chinese new year resolutions... a little bit closer, right? so bring on the year of the rabbit.

1. read more books

one of my favourite things about london was that i had a commute every day. sounds crazy, i know. but my commute involved 30 minutes on a train in the morning and 30 minutes by train or taxi in the evening. which meant i always had time to read. i read probably 20-25 books in 2010 and it was a key element to me keeping my sanity throughout 2010. this year i'm already struggling to keep up with the pace i set last year so my goal is to read 20 books this year.

some favourites of 2010 were

city of thieves:

city of thieves is an engaging and darkly humourous book set in the WWII Siege of Leningrad. the books follows 17-year old lev who has been arrested for a looting german paratrooper's corpse and kolya, a russian army deserter. they are spared execution on the condition that they acquire a dozen eggs for colonel's daughter's wedding cake, an impossible task in a war-torn and starving country. the book is enthralling, touching, difficult, funny - all the elements for a perfect novel. i feel i should put a disclaimer on this book: there are a number of scenes that are difficult and not quite PG-13 but are an honest portrayal of what life would be like in that situation. this is probably one of my all-time favourite books.

middlesex:

this was one of the last books I read in 2010 and is easily tied with city of thieves as the favourite. i've struggled to accurately describe this novel in a way that fully encapsulates the depth and beauty of this novel so i'll let one review on amazon do the work for me...

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope.

When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end.

i can't recommend this book enough.

water for elephants:

a charming book about a young veterinarian student ruining away to join a second-rate circus that is struggling to survive during the great depression. a fabulous coming-of-age novel (do you see a theme here in my books that I love?) that is gritty, humourous and compelling.

the blind assassin:

this was a book i recommended to my sister immediately after reading. for the first 20 pages she couldn't figure out why on earth i'd recommend this to her but by the end she said it was one of her favourites. it is a delicately woven story about the fall of a prominent family throughout WWII and the following years. loved this book.

the hunger games series:

yes everyone and their mother has read and recommended these books. but when i heard the premise, i wasn't convinced. however when my book club was tossing out ideas of an easy book to read over one of the summer months this one came up. so i gave it a try and after struggling through the first 20 or so pages i became so engrossed with the plot that i even missed my stop a time or two! while i didn't love the third book, it is still a great series to read.

phew this post became a book report instead of a resolutions post. i swear i really have committed to do more than just read.

2. volunteer at least every other month

pretty self explanatory. i need to be less selfish in life.

3. get off the internet unless i'm doing something productive

i'm officially addicted to the internet. especially when it's on my iphone. have you seen those news articles about people addicted to their smart phones? i can check all the boxes.

don't know the answer to a trivia question? let me check on that.

what's this song that's playing on the radio? i can find an app for that.

when's the movie playing? don't you worry - i've got the movie times as my home page.

it's dangerous. and when i get home what's the first thing i do?

kiss my husband of course, i'm not THAT addicted. but second usually involves a trip to the laptop to check one of the following:

a. email

b. facebook

c. cnn.com

so the goal of the year is to put down that laptop and maybe pick up one of the 20 books i've just committed myself to read! or you know, maybe have a conversation with my husband.

4. spend half an hour before bed to write in my journal or read at least 4 times a week

5. exercise more regularly

because i say this every year, and somehow it always gets away from me. i'd like to work out at least 2-3 times a week as a minimum. i'm the all-or-nothing girl. When i work out i work OUT. five days a week, an hour and a half each time. but then one, two, three days get away from me and i'm done for.

6. Get certified to dive

7. Cook more!

I am not a cook. I can count on one hand the number of REAL meals I've cooked in the 2.5 years I've been married. I'm great at pasta and warming up some chicken. But when work pays for your dinner every night it's easy to get lazy. So now that we are in NY I'm determined to break out the cookbooks. So for now the goal is a "real, made from scratch, more than 5 ingredients" kind of meal once a month. It's my Julia/Julia project yet far less ambitious and hopefully with a little less butter.

8. Figure out what I want to do wih the rest of my life!

So there you go.

Year of the Rabbit - it is on!