Sunday Wrapup

Little Free Library
I used to swap the books out every week, but then I came back from having ignored the thing for 3 weeks over the Christmas break and all but 6 books were gone. (It holds about 35.) Also, some books stayed a week and then were taken on day 10. So I'm going for slow churn now rather than fast turnover.

GIVEN: A couple of Lee Child novels

LEFT & RETURNED: Under the Tuscan Sun, 102 Minutes (then left again)

LEFT: La Vera Cucina cookbook, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sudoku, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Wishbones, The World According to Clarkson, Time to Run

House Renovation
After complaints of not enough seats in the living room during the 12th night get-together, I've moved a large armchair from the library to the living room and given it a slipcover to make it match. It makes the living room a tad cramped, but it certainly did a lot to declutter the library!

Also, I got new silverware (another complaint, as the former new silverware was unbalanced and kept falling off plates) and new wire racks to put it in.

52 Organizing Missions
How to Have More Personal Time
3 Things to Immediately Strike Off Your To-Do List

52 Weight Loss Missions
Observe Your Behavior in a Log, Blog, or Journal
Keep a Food Diary

... I realize this looks like a lot, but I'm actually knocking off all the really easy ones to accomplish up front, which is probably cheating.

New Recipe
By the way, I've taken a good look at the Cook's Illustrated Science of Cooking book and realized that at least half the chapters I either already know the lesson, aren't interested in any of the recipes, or do not eat that food. So I'm taking it off the resolutions list. I do intend to try a new recipe every week... although I'm kinda goldbricking by having tried a new nuke-a-food instead of actually cooking something this week. Eh, I tried two recipes last week.

Oh, and I'm still looking for a baked bean recipe.


7 items donated/trashed
Still haven't done that. Am doubtless going to have to do a whole lot some week to make up for it. Unfortunately, considering the clutter around here, that's not going to be hard.

Other Accomplishments
- Attended going out of business sale of local yarn store
- Clinic shift
- Negotiated Stratford vacation w/M and got B&B accommodations. (We're going up the last week in August, with a return just before Labor Day.)
- Caught up 4 out of 11 Elementary episodes for article (I know there are 12 episodes, but I'm not rewatching the pedophile/child murder one again for any reason, essays be damned)

Today I'm going to contact the people running 221BCon to see if I can get on a couple of the panels. There's one Elementary that I seriously need to grab quotes from, and I also need to wrap up the 2012 financial records and put them away. There's other paperwork I'd like to do, but I also just started reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookshop and there's some question of whether I'll be able to put it down.

Resolution stuff

Lifehacker pointed at an interesting set of questions to do your year-in-review -- not what have you accomplished per se, but:

What went well for me last year?
What accomplishments did I have?
How did I improve my life?
How did I improve my relationships?
What did I remove from my life that is now making me happier?
What do I wish I had taken more time for?

It's not a bad set of questions.

I'm also thinking that I'm going to move the Sunday achievements/goals to Goal Happy. It's a web-based goal and achievement counter, which means there will be less paperwork and typing than the current method, which is, well, paper and typing. I don't know if it'll output anything I can post to LJ, or if anyone is going to feel particularly bereft if I stop posting that stuff here. Sign up is free, and you can set your goals to daily, weekly, or monthly.

I'll keep up with the Little Free Library posts. I'm looking into library apps so that I can scan books in and out - any recs?

This book has promise

I've started reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, and it's quite the page-turner. It's also full of dry geek/nerd wit like this passage from when the slightly bored protagonist has started building a 3D model of the store:

"It's crude -- just a bunch of gray blocks slotted together like virtual LEGOS -- but it's starting to look familiar. The shape is appropriately shoe-boxy and all the shelves are there. I've set them up with a coordinate system, so my program can file aisle 3, shelf 13 all by itself. Simulated light from the simulated windows casts sharp-edged shadows through the simulated store. If this sounds impressive to you, you're over thirty."

The only downside is that I'm trying to knit while I read - I'd like to finish this block tonight, and preferably finish the blanket before A Tangled Skein closes for good - and reading paper books while knitting is a bear. The big advantage to ebooks is that you don't have to prop them open and you can tap with a knuckle to turn the page; you don't even have to put the knitting down. But I haven't gotten far enough along in the book to be sure that I want to own an ecopy.