I really need to come up with a more original Friday blog entry gimmick. And a new picture. Every time I look at that photo I think “Eek, vampire!” Except it’s just me.
1) We’re moving! It’s official. We’re moving to Portland in June. Woo hoo!
2) We’re starting to look at apartments in Portland because we aren’t ready to buy yet. We tried to get this nice woodsy one full of young bike riding environmentalists (I got this from an extensive phone interview) next to the gigantic Forest Park. Our out of town application was beaten out by mere minutes by an in towner who hand delivered the check before the postman got there. Doh!
3) The next apartment on the list was completely different and, in fact, if I wasn’t reading Suite Scarlett right now I probably wouldn’t even have considered it. It’s downtown and it looks totally like a fancy hotel inside. A far cry from the bike riding environmentalist/dishwasher-less apartment. But Scarlett and, more importantly, Mrs. Amberson make living in a hotel seem like a fun thing to do. Although the place we were going to apply to is more like Hotel Sofitel in Chicago (my favorite hotel) than the cool old hotel in the book. Unfortunately, the ad for this wasn’t put up by the apartment complex itself. Someone stole their info and put up the ad at a lower price — apparently you’re supposed to e-mail them directly and then they run with your deposit. We googled the name of the place instead of e-mailing the contact on the ad and called the number on their site which is where we found all of this out. So we won’t be applying there. Double doh!
4) On the subject of Suite Scarlett, I’m totally loving it and I think it really captures Maureen Johnson’s voice and funniness (at least, based on her blog entries) more than any other book she’s written. It’s about a fifteen year old named Scarlett who lives in an old hotel in New York that her family owns, but can barely manage because they’ve run out of money. Her parents ask her to personally take care of Mrs. Amberson, a retired actress who lived in New York in the 30’s, and who’s staying for the entire summer. She’s quite insane, but so far really funny too.
5) In a tribute to Wisconsin, I ate almost all dairy meals for the last two days. Wednesday — yogurt breakfast, cheese and cracker lunch (I’m on a writing vacation this week, I don’t have time for anything more complex!), and mac & cheese from The Old Fashioned for dinner. Thursday — yogurt breakfast, left-over mac & cheese lunch, walnut cheddar veggie burger for dinner. There were a few fruit and vegetables thrown in there, but my body’s used to eating lots of fruit and veggies with just a little dairy and now I feel like I’m going to die. Done in by WI cheese.
6) The other CCBC Book Discussion books I read for this week, besides the fabulous Sweethearts by Sara Zarr were:
The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry — a super fun play on “old-fashioned” books that is darkly humorous.
Game by Walter Dean Myers which might be more enjoyable if you were really into basketball, but I pretended it was one of the cute guys on Friday Night Lights (football and basketball aren’t too far away on the spectrum in my head, even if they are in real life) and that made it somewhat more interesting.
Ringside 1925: Views from the Scopes trial by Jen Bryant which is historical fiction in poetry format about the Scopes Trial and which sounded honestly not that thrilling to me but turned out to have some unexpected humor like when they ask the teacher if he minds if they arrest him and he says, Sure, but can I catch a game of tennis first?
The last novel on the list, I didn’t get to read before the discussion — My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger. I’m planning to read it this weekend. They talked about it at the discussion for more than twenty minutes while I waited outside, so it must be really interesting.
Have a great weekend!
Bridget