Posts for category ‘santa fe adventures’

• I didn’t reunite with last summer’s boot camp personal trainer dude. Upon arrival I immediately got strep throat and was down for about ten days, then it felt like a succession of visitors and events and like I couldn’t really afford it, so instead I got a punch pass for the local gym. And seriously, that thing was like the loaves and fishes. According to my tally, I should have run out of visits about ten times ago, but I never got turned away at the front desk. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Sara + too much unstructured time = fear & loathing. I’m okay without my routine for three or four weeks, but after that…oy. I tried to sort of have a routine, but being displaced and not having the external things that normally help create routine made it pretty hard. This is one of the main reasons I’m so happy to be going home. I covet control (or at least the illusion of it) too much to handle eight weeks of absolute “freedom.” Doing whatever you want whenever you want really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and it isn’t freedom. Actually, it’s a kind of hell. FYI.

• Nonetheless, I did get done what I needed to on book #3. I still have a ton of work cut out for me as soon as I get settled at home.

I learned that I could never survive life in the suburbs, or any place too far from an urban center. Maybe some place in the country if it was really the country country. City or country. But not this in-between.

• It was good to take that four-week break from blogging and reading blogs and all the social networking stuff. While I was away, I read (in a Paula Huston book) this Pascal quote (which I might have wrong, because now I’m quoting it from my journal): “It is rare we see ourselves as we are. Instead, we strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect the real one.” It seems like so much of the blogging and networking stuff is about embellishing and preserving our imaginary being, right? Creating a person that we want to put out into the world? I mean, I guess we do that in a way all the time, but the Internet makes it so easy. So it felt good and right to take a break from the buffing and polishing of that public self and get re-acquainted with the real one. Although, extended time with the real self is no day at the park.

Absence from my normal life does indeed make the heart grow fonder. I’m enthused about fall, and not just because it’s football season. I feel very back-to-school-ish. September 1 is always better than January 1 in my book.

• For the first time in my life, I wore shorts nearly every day this summer. And yet my legs are still as pasty pearly white as ever. It’s my fate.

See you next week, when I’ll be blogging from home sweet home.

This weekend: I watched TV, and some movies, went out to dinner, nursed a migraine, and wondered how I’m going to make it through the last week in Santa Fe. In previous years, I hit a wall around week four or five. This time it came late, but it came hard. This is not my beautiful house. Where is that large automobile? Where does that highway go? But mostly I think there are way too many spiders here. They come up the drain. I close the drain. They squeeze their giant bodies through the crack. I wash them down. They come back up. That itsy-bitsy-spider song isn’t so cute anymore. Maybe they like toothpaste. They also go marching around on the floors at night when they think we’re asleep. I don’t go barefoot.

During my migraine-hazy channel surfing, I saw some weird stuff. I flip by the Food Network. Is that Jay Manuel of ANTM on Paula Deen’s show?  Yes, it is. Is that Richard Simmons testifying before congress? Yes, it is. It’s a strange world.

I watched two movies. Starting Out In the Evening. Beautiful. Has anyone read the novel it was based on? In the Land of Women. Way better than I expected based on what I remember from critical reviews. I liked it! A lot. I’ve always liked those Kasdan boys, Jon and Jake. Oh, and I saw Pants 2. Love. Like a fuzzy blanket. I kind of have a girl crush on America Ferrera. Also, if you want to see cute Greek Kostos as a cute American, you should be watching Swingtown. It’s a great show that will probably be canceled in no time flat. Anyway, Michael Rady is in it with very adorable sideburns. You can watch full episodes on the CBS site.

So, the lovely Lisa McMann alerted me to the fact that Sweethearts is on a list that is part of a new Oprah Book Club thing. And so are a bunch of other books by friends, including 2k7er Kelly Bingham’s Shark Girl, John Green’s forthcoming Paper Towns, and E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. And  Shannon Hale’s Book of a Thousand Days, which I also found out is one of the other finalists for the Utah Book Award so you know Shannon and I and whoever the mysterious third person is are going to make a scene during the book fest come October.

Meanwhile, I wanna go home.

So, I hardly took any pictures at the Glen this year, but my pal Jeffrey Overstreet had it pretty well covered, including Oprah-Beknighted author Bret Lott teaching me how to open a bottle of wine (and boy do I seem happy), just one of the beautiful Santa Fe sunsets we saw nightly, me reading my Bret Anthony Johnston as teenage skater story at the meeting of the Thomas Parker Society, and my favorite—with Jeffrey and his beautiful and talented wife, poet Anne Overstreet. If you dig through his flickr, you can sort of get a feel for the whole experience, but really you have to be there. And you should, by the way, if such things interest you, register for next year and we can have fun together. I’ll alert you at registration time! Speaking of Jeffrey, he recently interviewed Andrew Stanton, the writer/director of WALL*E – it’s very interesting.

And: Me with G. before the St. John’s Graduate Institute brunch. One year ’til graduation!

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Are you a Salt Lake County resident? If so, let the county know how you feel about local arts and culture. Go to SLCO.org and follow the link to the survey. Your input could help decide arts and culture funding for the next couple of years.

Finally, check out the Teen Fiction Cafe where it is anything goes week. I blogged about fan mail, but there are also demon babies and frilly dresses.

Oh, and finally finally, the day has come! I am only two degrees of separation from a Lifetime Movie! True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet debuts Saturday night, 9 p.m. Eastern. And it is based on blog friend Lara Zeises’/Lola Douglas’ novel. Woo! In related news, while I was on my blog-reading hiatus, Lara went and got engaged. Congratulations!

That seems like a happy note on which to go into the weekend. I am now going to rest my poor crippled fingers, which have become unaccustomed to so much web surfing. See you on Monday!