017.

It gives me a weird kind of joy to know that, come Friday, Twilight fans all over the globe will be mispronouncing "Sequim" in their heads when they reach page 9 of Breaking Dawn.

PS. Ugh, I'd forgotten how "Omg seventeen is the perfect age and I don't ever want to mature" these books are. It's annoying.

016.

Ugh, fatigue. It's the fourth day of my new diet, and that's all I feel. Now, I'm at the end of a Remicade cycle, which is always fatigue inducing, so that's one explanation. But even after my breakfast this morning of banana pancakes (yum! banana + egg + a little cinnamon & vanilla), applesauce and provolone cheese, I still feel tired and rundown.

The first two days I could understand it, because I didn't eat as much (oops). I know that I've been working full time, and just came back from camp (and so am still a bit dehydrated and exhausted).

I have noticed a difference in my gums, though. They're 50% healthier, shiny and not puffy at all, and light pink. That's probably because I've stopped eating white sugar and corn syrup.

So, I've made a resolution. I'll stay on this diet for thirty days. If I don't get better, or feel better, or something at the end of those thirty days, I will re-introduce whole grains (I think refined grains and sugars are probably a bad idea regardless). I just finished Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and one of the things he claims is that the genes of people who come from different areas are adapted to the traditional foods of those areas. Europeans are some of the lucky few who have been eating grains for a long time, so I may be able to tolerate whole grains without totally upsetting the balance of bacteria/yeast in my gut (I'm mostly French/British Isles).

Also, Michal Pollan talked about the balance between Omega-3 (from plants) and Omega-6 (from grains) fatty acids. And, in short super-reductionated science, Omega-3s fight inflammation while Omega-6s cause it. The SCD might help bring back my ratio of the two into optimal levels.

So. If this fatigue clears up, I'll consider staying on the diet. If not, good riddance.

003.

Inspired by the last of Dr Krug's class, I started going through all my old school notebooks and making a list of all the books in the margins (whenever a professor mentions a book that sounds interesting and isn't part of the curriculum, I write it down for possible future perusal). I've gotten an entire front-and-back in my journal so far, and it's only the first notebook.

Krug wanted to make sure his point hit home, and asked us to make a list of 100 books (and 100 pieces of music, 50 artists, 20 philosophers) that we think we need to know, and read those. He's big into reading; every class was essentially him telling us that we need to think for ourselves (which is probably why so many people think he's crazy). He is crazy, but in a very good way. Honestly, his class struck the balance between kick-in-the-pants (read! get involved! seek alternative sources!) and new things. He genuinely cares about us, and I think that helped his message a lot.

He definitely inspired me to step up my game. I only wish the rest of the class listened.

001.

After blog hopping at least three times in the past fortnight, I think I've finally settled on a name and concept. The inspiration for the title I will keep to myself for now (sharing my poetry is not something I do willingly anymore). My goal for this blog is to get myself to write about anything, write to improve, to learn, to be. I want to be be able to look back and read the little quirks in my days, how my thoughts have changed and how I have changed myself.

This past two weeks has seen me devouring more than my share of books. This excites me, as I got burned up during my last literature course (8 Victorian novels in a little less than three months), and refused to read anything more substantial than Twilight for four months. Then, over spring break, I read three books (Breaking the Vicious Cycle, The Neverending Story & The Sound and the Fury). So I set my hat for Dune, which I had been attempting to read for the last year (woe, I am shamed). Read it. Finished the last half at a remarkable clip, I might add.

The problem with finishing an amazing book is that it leaves a huge void in one's life. Almost the minute I put it down, I was itching for another book to read, one that could capture my imagination as much as Dune did. So that night, when I found PDF copies of the Twilight sequels, the inevitable occurred. I read those two books in five days, on top of classes, two part-time jobs and a giant Illustrator project. And then I couldn't get them out of my head (even though the end of Eclipse pissed me off so bad, I wanted to burn the book...but that's a story for another time). Because I wanted to shake off the horrible sparkly vampire infestation, I read That Extra Half Inch (informative and entertaining) and The Next Thing on my List (only mildly inspiring & totally forgettable) over the next two days. It didn't help. But I read a remarkable amount of books considering my workload.

And it makes me happy.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go read Sunshine by Robin McKinley.