The Sunday Salon: Happy New Year!

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! I hope you have many wonderful things to look forward to this year. It's been a year since I started doing this journal-y Sunday post and it seems to be a good thing, so I think I'll keep it up.

Outside my window: It's smack in the middle of the day on Sunday! That is new! We have early church this year, which means I'll have the whole afternoon to, you know, hang out. The past week has been beautiful, speaking of outside my window, and it's blue and sunny and clear and cold. But still, I'd like some snow please.

I am listening to: Pandora... on my newly created Jonsi station. That's because Jonsi did the soundtrack for We Bought a Zoo and I was intrigued. It's very mellow, strangely hypnotic type music. I have no better description.

Song of the week: Here's an example of a Jonsi song from We Bought a Zoo:




TV Talk: Oh boy, I've been very much into Doctor Who this week. Wow. The end of season four, though I still have one more episode left... an episode I'm avoiding because it's titled "The Next  Doctor" which makes me think we'll be making the transition from this:

to this:

Now, I've heard really good things about this last doctor, but I will so much miss the other one! Especially the way he has made me look at the word "well" in a whole new way:



Let's see. I'm hoping there's an episode of Once Upon a Time on tonight. Anyone know? And I watched the first episode of Revenge awhile back and I think I'd like to watch another one. We got Supernatural season 1 on DVD for Christmas and my daughter took that over and went ballistic. She has now way passed me up!


Reading Report
Books I've finished: This week I finished The Iron Daughter and Torment, both good and interesting for the most part.
Books I've started: I got Delirium from the library and yes have started it!
Books I want to start: The Wise Man's Fear is going to be next, I swear it is!

Oh, and hey, I copied a lot of people and did a graph of my reading over the years. Want to see?

Can you guess what year I started book blogging? You'd think that all that blogging and reading blogs would have taken away time from reading books, right? Strange how that doesn't really work that way. Man, I wish I could see what the previous decade of the 90s would look like graphed out like this! I would guess I was reading maybe 40 or so books a year... maybe 30. Gosh, I have no idea. But I do know that when I started keeping track in 2002, I thought I was really revving up the reading then.

Well, that was fun! (Did you see how I snuck that in here so you didn't notice I did yet another reading wrap up post? Clever, yes?)


I am thinking: that I better get going on Inheritance and Path of Daggers before I totally forget I was even reading them. I'm also thinking that I want to see War Horse before the holidays are officially over... that leaves tomorrow.

I am grateful for: the end of one year and the beginning of another, though it always makes me sad a little, and nervous a little.

What I learned this week: that two weeks of a "doing nothing" vacation is just a touch too long.

Around the house: it's one huge mess! I did put away Christmas gifts, but the decor has not gone yet. And it's still very much cluttered and lived in and there's no way to get a handle on that until everyone goes back to school.

Recipe of the week: Not much cooking going on around here this week.

Favorite things of the week: Going to see We Bought a Zoo, seeing out of state family, sleeping in, reading, doing year end blog posts

Family matters: Kid #1 is supposed to move out tomorrow. He's feeling a bit leery suddenly. He's also sick and I hope we all don't get it. Kid #2 starts back to college on Wed. so she will move back either tomorrow or Tuesday too. It will seem weird without them so suddenly. Kids 3 and 4 start back on Tuesday, but with weird schedules for a week. I hope we figure it out without too much stress. It's going to be an interesting week trying to get them up and make them go to bed at "normal" hours.

Things I hope to accomplish in the coming week: put away Christmas, go to South Pacific at the theater, get back on a routine, call the dentist

The Blog Report: I loved doing many year end wrap posts this past week. Here are the links if you missed them and are interested: Reading in 2011 by the Numbers, Ten Best Bookish Events of the Year, Year End Book Survey, Favorite Books of the Year

Here's to a new year of reading and books!