#48 - read one book each month outside of schoolwork

If there's one thing I love--luckily, I love more things than that, but if there had to be just one, and it wasn't Ricky or my cat or my family or any of those things--it's Julie Andrews.

I didn't mean for Home to be my September book. In fact, I was really eying a Dostoevsky for this month, but Ricky and I made the mistake of going into Borders one night and I found this beauty on sale for five dollars. I opened it up there in the store and proceeded to read for 20 minutes until they announced that the store was closing and I better buy the book or get the heck out. After a tiny twinge of guilt for spending money on a book that I certainly don't need...I bought it anyway. (It's a problem.)

And it was AWESOME. Julie Andrews had a fascinating childhood, and the way she writes is so astoundingly British that my inner reading voice actually develops a strong accent. I love it. Her children's book, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, is my favorite in the genre--so favorite, in fact, that I bought an extra copy just in case I need to loan it out to someone so they can understand how wonderful it is.

Did I mention that I love Julie Andrews?

Anyway, Home was a quick, enjoyable read and I hope that Julie Andrews has more memoirs out there for me to devour. This one ends right after she signs on to do Mary Poppins, and who isn't interested in hearing that story? If you love Ms. Andrews, you'll love the book. But, as a wise man once said, "You don't have to take my word for it!"

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#16 - go to Claytor Lake

Yes, it is mid-January, and yes, I did decide this was a good time to visit a lake. Claytor Lake has free admission if you bring your Christmas tree for them to submerge as a reef for the fish, so off we went! It was a balmy 60 degrees with some pretty good wind, so not too terrible overall for a go-outside-in-the-dead-of-winter activity. We had fun throwing rocks in the water (B) and walking the trails (decidedly not B, who announced "I'm bored of walking!"). But hey, we did the thing. (Currently making plans to come back in the summer when we can actually go in the water!)

#29 - write in a journal weekly for six months (1/27)

Ok, blogosphere. It's time to get serious. One of the items on my list is keeping a weekly journal for six months, and since I'm getting dangerously close to not having six months left in those 999 days, I better start now. I'd much prefer to keep a paper journal, but it takes so long to hand-write things. (First world problems, right?) So here we are. I'll be pulling prompts from this website whenever I get stuck...so, basically all the time. I really struggle with blogging because I'm too worried about how I come across to the people reading it, and that distracts me from writing about real things like how I really want to play a Dungeons and Dragons game (I'm serious, you guys) and how I may or may not have left a load of laundry in the washing machine for two days and am writing this to avoid dealing with it. First up is something eerily similar to those Livejournal/Facebook "fill this out about yourself" lists, so consider this m...

2021, in conclusion/memoriam

We're all just ignoring any and all goals we set during the pandemic, right? Right. After the nightmare that was 2020, 2021 wasn't so bad. I submitted my first first-author publication that uncovered a long-standing misconception about airborne transmission of disease, and it got me featured in WIRED magazine . I successfully defended and submitted my dissertation about volunteer health communication in US refugee resettlement. (Those two projects sound very unrelated, but medical rhetoric is the key there :) :)) After 2 years of doctoral coursework and 3 (soul-sucking) years of dissertating, I graduated with a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing from Virginia Tech. My mental health immediately improved. While I was finishing my dissertation, we sold our townhouse in Blacksburg and moved to a 1910s-era bungalow in coastal North Carolina. My daughter started 1st grade (!) in a Spanish immersion program. We all got vaccinated. I was on set as an extra in a Simu Liu/Phillipa So...

Katie's 99 in 999 (currently 55 in 555!)

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