Monday, October 14, 2013

Jane the Pup

On my birthday, we did something I've been wanting to do for a long time: brought home a pup to foster. Jane only stayed with us for a week, but she was adorable and I had an amazing time.
 
See how cute she is. She'll look at you with those big brown eyes and whine.
 




Wednesday, October 09, 2013

Mid-Week Reads: Fantasy Fiction Edition -- Hufflepuff House and Narnia

I'm "smart but lazy" myself (okay, the "smart" part is debatable, but bear with me here), so I really liked this blog post about Hufflepuff House.
I’m going to try to catch myself if I start admiring someone’s talent, and remind myself that their real achievement was putting in the work that it took to fulfill the potential their talent gave them. 
Brains aren’t much without the patience to fill them with knowledge.  Ambition without dedication is daydreams and an overblown sense of entitlement. 
The more I think about where I am and where I want to be, the more I compare myself with more successful people, I feel the biggest difference is that I don't put in enough work. (Of course, I might fail even if I put in the work, but if I don't, I don't even have a chance.)

But well, comparing yourself with others too much isn't a good idea either. (Lovely comic at the link.)

In other news, I have another new favorite blog. I have been trawling through Ana Mardoll's Ramblings, especially her deconstructions. I read her entire series on Narnia, even though it's been many years since I read the books. (I think I re-read one or two a few years ago, but adulthood made them sadly disappointing.) I'm now reading through her Twilight series, even though I haven't read the books. But Mardoll's writing teaches me so much about lit criticism, writing, and life.

Monday, October 07, 2013

What I Miss About Having a Job

I wrote this for the Markitty team blog, but thought you might like it, so I'm reblogging it here. (Besides, no one reads that blog -- not even my team, and I think about two people still read this one.)

The mundane
This will sound silly, and it surprised me when I first realized it, but I miss mundane, mindless data entry kind of work. Copying a list into a different format, or manually sorting through an Excel file… that kind of task was anathema to me, or so I thought. Now I miss what seems like the therapeutic mindlessness of it on days when I’d rather not make decisions.

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Mid-Week Reads: Advice Columns and Relationships

I found this about Geek Social Fallacies, and it describes the behavior of quite a few people I've known, especially when I was younger. And they weren't necessarily geeks too, so I think a lot of people feel like this about friendship when they're younger. You might find it interesting.

I'm an obsessive reader of advice columns, and while I'm hooked on Carolyn Hax and Captain Awkward and That Bad Advice right now, this makes me think I should be trawling through the archives of Dear Sugar:
You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart.