The Day After...

The tree looks scrawny this morning. It's fake so it didn't lose its needles overnight or anything. Just all the anticipation. All the preparation. All the company. It's over and there is some relief in that but also this sense of being let down and now what? I'm used to this feeling though. It happens every year. I will spend the day cleaning and clearing. Making room for the new "stuff". Getting back into a semi-normal routine. Not hitting the stores today. I am so shopped out. Every year I think there must be another way to do this holiday.

Here's what's been happening this last month:

Good news- I lost nine pounds using www.sparkpeople.com since November and kept it off during the holidays. I worked out almost everyday which was the key I think.

Saw two great movies with my mom while she was here. "Juno" and "P.S. I love You". "Juno" was the better of the two. I will be buying that one when it comes out. It is just so well written.

I read "The Other Boleyn Girl" which is not my usual cup of tea but I got totally sucked into it. I'd been having trouble finding a good book to lose myself in. I started The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life by Robert Goolrick and was happily zipping along, fascinated by this quirky southern family and then it got dark. And darker. And I just didn't want to be in a dark place. So I put it down and picked up "The Other Boleyn Girl" and couldn't put it down. I became totally absorbed in this other world and time. It was a good lesson in plotting and throwing obstacles in the way over and over again and in what a character wants an how far she'll go to get it. And now I see it will be a movie soon. Excellent...

Just finished "A Student of Living Things." Another good lesson in plotting. Just a good story set in post 9-11 Washington DC where pockets of violence erupt sporadically and how a family, specifically a sister deals with an unexpected tragedy.

Now I am reading "The Principles of Uncertainty" which is a journal illustrating and writing one year in a life. It's giving me some great ideas for my own visual journals. Quite captivating.

I am also reading the Winter Fiction issue of "The New Yorker." I'm in the middle of the correspondence between Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish. Fascinating...

Coming up:
- creative revolutions instead of resolutions
- books to be read for a book challenge I found in the blog world