Lifestyle — Page 27

Reading goals for 2011

February 3, 2011

I recently signed up for Goodreads. It’s a really nice way to keep track of the books I’ve read as well as books I want to read. There’s even a nice little status update that allows me to track what page of a book I’m on, enter a quote or comment, and even tweet it. Back in January, I noticed they have a 2011 Reading Challenge. Oooh, exciting, right? How many books will I read?

While most of the people I know are setting goals of 20, 30, even 52 books, I kept it at a reasonable 6. I can read 6 books in 2011. That’s a book every other month . . . or 2 months to finish a book as I’d like to look at it. I’m hoping to read more than that, obviously, but I have a bad habit of not finishing things. I’ll be lucky if I post daily through the end of the month! So I figured, for once, just this one little time, I will set a goal that I will actually meet. Maybe it will motivate me to complete more goals and start a whole chain reaction of do-goodedness.

Here are the 6 books* that I foresee reading:

Mocking Jay by Suzanne Collins
Third and last book of The Hunger Games trilogy. The ending has already kind of been spoiled for me, so I need to hurry up and read it before it gets full-on spoiled. I’m currently on page 16.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Must read before the movie, starring the delicious Robert Pattinson, comes out on April 22!

Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick
Sequel to Hush, Hush, which I had my nose stuck in for two days straight at Blog Cabin last summer. Team Patch!

All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
Seventh book in The Southern Vampire Mysteries aka True Blood.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach
I honestly have no idea what this book is about, but it doesn’t matter because it’s written by one of my favorite authors. If you haven’t read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, then you are really missing out.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Mar
First book in the series of the same name. Mary talked a big game about this book, and I managed to snag both this and the second book, Ink Exchange, from borders.com for $2.28. No lie.

*excludes audio books. ebooks are a-okay.

There’s the list. Wish me luck, and let me know what’s on your to-read list this year.

Post a day in February

February 2, 2011

To celebrate jillapalooza’s 4th anniversary this month, I decided to make one blog post a day during the month of February. I got the idea from my buddy Mary who has taken the initiative to do a post a day for an entire year.

Of course I decided to move my site to a hosting company yesterday, February 1, and didn’t get it working again until 11 PM today. Nick’s website and the Beez website were up and working within an hour. But mine? No such luck. I tried yelling “fuck” really loud but the computer seemed unimpressed. But I’m late for everything, so is it really that surprising? I’m not going to let missing one little day get me down, even if it was the kick off day.

Feel free to join in by posting on your own blog or leaving me comments (hint, hint).

So much for my 15 minutes

January 21, 2011

Earlier this week, I received a very interesting message in my YouTube inbox:

WEtv saw your wedding video and would love to give you a BRAND NEW WEDDING!

Hello Jill,

My name is Heather Teta and I’m a Casting Director for WEtv and Ish Entertainment. I’m currently casting lovely, deserving couples (like you!) who experienced some kind of unforeseen wedding mishap on their big day. This exciting new series will give these these couples a BRAND NEW WEDDING, all expenses paid, planned by an acclaimed wedding designer to the stars! When I came across the video of your dress getting caught in the escalator at your wedding, I just HAD to reach out to you. You SO deserve another day to celebrate your marriage without the dress stress!

This is not a wedding vendor expose…OR a show designed to belittle couples’ original wedding day memories. We just want to give great, loving couples the opportunity to having the wedding celebration of their dreams, especially since things didn’t go according to plan on the first try! We’re working with deserving couples who battled anything from weather related issues (power outages, rain on outdoor weddings), family drama (bad wedding toasts, family arguments/fights on the big day), illnesses (flu or food poisoning on the wedding day) or even bloopers (trips, falls, cake mishaps) that kept them from enjoying the wedding day they always dreamed of!

If you’re interested in learning more, please don’t hesitate to contact me! You can also visit our website at: www.IshTVCasting.com or at WEtv’s website: http://www.wetv.com/we-tv-casting.html#newweddingshow for more info. You’ll see that we’re primarily casting couples in the Los Angeles area but I’d love to work something out with you if you’re interested.

Thanks so much – talk to you soon!

Heather Teta

[contact info removed]

Okay, so . . . that’s exciting, right? Fly to LA, wear a pretty white dress, have another wedding that I don’t have to organize, see the behind the scenes of a TV show, etc. She didn’t specify that I needed to remarry the same person, but I’m assuming that’s part of the deal.

Anyway, I couldn’t do it. Our wedding was perfect even with the dress mishap. If I could go back and change it—take the stairs or have Nick hold the back—I wouldn’t. It’s a great story to tell! And if I’m being honest, I like people praising me for being cool as a cucumber about the whole thing.

The opportunity for a dream wedding do over should be given to the people with real disasters. Sick family, bad weather, injuries, drunken groomsmen making asses of themselves—all those things are more deserving than having my dinner delayed 10 minutes and a torn, greasy section of my dress that I couldn’t even see because it was behind me the entire night and is now stored in a hermetically sealed box in the closet of my mom’s house. Now, let’s say the dress was torn completely from my body and the pictures hadn’t yet been taken, then we’d be talking. But as it is, nothing they could do would hold a candle to the real thing.

I graciously declined this morning, in hopes that my 15 minutes of fame will recycle itself in another form. *sigh*