This past weekend was a whirlwind of activity. On Saturday night, my mom, sister, S and I went to see "700 Sundays", Billy Crystal's one-man Broadway show. (My dad bought us tickets because he had just gone on Thursday, and thought it was so good.) It was really good. Crystal is no slouch at the comedy business; he had the crowd from the moment the play started. I didn't expect the play to be so touching, but I definitely didn't realize his life was so damn interesting. His family was in the center of the jazz world until the 60's (when rock and roll took over the music biz), and Crystal's stories about watching a movie with Billie Holiday (she was Miss Billie to his Mr. Billy) and seeing Duke Ellington at his father's funeral lent the show an almost surreal feel. I had no idea, to put it bluntly. It made me like Crystal all the more.
Last night, my mom, my sister and I went to a Blackhawks game. I'd never really been to a hockey game, and got free tickets through one of my newspaper subscriptions. It was fun, though I know seriously NOTHING about hockey, so a lot of what went on made very little sense to me. And because our tickets were free, they were predictably not good. They were so not good that we were in the upper deck, but friends, it gets worse. We were in the upper deck, in the very last row. We climbed and climbed and then we sat at the very top of the cavernous United Center. The view is not so bad for hockey, just because it gives you a really nice view of the ice. I had a hard time following the puck anyway, so I think if I were closer, it's be that much worse. Fun times.
And one last thing. Last year, on November 12th, I started keeping track of every single book I read (or listened to, though there are only two audiobooks on the list), where it came from (borrowed from someone or the library, bought, gift, etc.), and what month I read it in. Between then and November 12, 2005, I read 243 books. That's an average of four a week (five books a week for 35 of those weeks), which is the goal I set out for myself when the new year began. When I look at the list, I'm struck by how many different types of books there are. I used my library a lot this year, mostly for non-fiction, so I read a lot of non-fiction. Of course, part of the reason I was able to read so much is because I did read a lot of romance--this year, I explored paranormal romance more than any other subgenre--and romance goes fast. There's no two ways about it. My reading has slowed considerably over the last month; apathy towards the books on my shelf accounts for some of the reason, but also my renewed devotion to cross-stitch must be part of the reason.
I've been sewing like a demon; I enjoy it more than any other thing I do at this point. I like sewing because I don't necessarily need to disconnect from the others around me when I do it. I can sew and watch TV, or sew and carry on an intelligent conversation. When reading, I tend to want to live within my book, which leads me to ignore everything but the book. I like being more present in the world.
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