Progressing Peacock

I have always thought peacocks were pretty, and since seeing them in Rhodes in quanitities similar to mallards on a Minnesota lake, I've been drawn to stitch them.

Here's my progress on a project that has been in the works since October 2008. I got a lot more stitching than reading done this weekend, and this was the subject of my efforts. It's a relaxing one to work on because there are few color changes, and once the brown outlines are in place, it's pretty difficult to make a major mistake. It's no Rhodes peacock, but it will brighten a room when it's finished.

From the book jacket: There is a story that is usually told about extremely successful people, a story that focuses on intelligence and ambition. In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell argues that the true story of success is very different, and that if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking arond them - at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. The story of success is more complex - and a lot more interesting - than it initially appears.

This was a quick read, despite the fact that I still incurred overdue charges at the library. The first half of the book discusses how a person’s environment and circumstantial opportunities contribute to amazing successes or lack thereof. The second half of the book looks at the role of one’s culture and heritage as it relates to success as well as failure. He has a variety of interesting examples that illustrate each of these points.

Two main thoughts kept coming back to me as I read. The first is that, if taken from a certain perspective, this book could cause some readers to give up on their dreams. (Depending on a person’s determination, of course.) After reading the first half of the book you could easily make the argument that if certain conditions don’t exist, your exceptional talent will never result in amazing success. However, the conditions that led to the successes discussed in the book were likely much more apparent in hindsight. So, to anyone who might find the book demotivating – you better not give up because your ultimate path to success won’t be clear until it’s history!

Secondly, and completely unrelated, I was in awe over the amount of research that must have been involved in the book. At the very least you must be skilled at seeing patterns in data in order to form the conclusions that Gladwell did. And, once you’ve formed your theory, you likely need to identify additional resources that support this theory. Lots of work!

I have read all three of Gladwell’s books and, although it’s been a few years since I read it, I believe Tipping Point was the best. I still think back to its main concepts every now and then as it relates to business and marketing. Each book has its merits and clearly illustrates that Malcolm Gladwell has a unique perspective on everyday concepts. Lucky for us, he is also skilled at explaining that perspective to those of us who typically think more inside the box.

Bring on Fall!

Ok, maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself. But I just finished this autumn Pine Mountain Pillow Kit. I wish I were so creative that I could say I made the pillow too, but until my husband teaches me how to use my sewing machine (seriously) I will have to rely on the folks at Pine Mountain. Funny how those home ec skills I learned by making bermuda shorts and a neon colored apron in 7th and 8th grade have completely disappeared.

Speaking of the 80s, my brother and I spent an enjoyable Saturday night reliving some of our favorite childhood memories via an 80s tune-fest on Grooveshark. I think we secretly hope we instilled appreciation for Toto, Anne Murray, Roger Whitaker, Mr. Belvadere, and the Muppet Babies (to name just a few) in his 7-week-old sons who got to enjoy the musical montage with us.

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

From the book jacket: A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue.

It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden…and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder.

It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance…and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age – and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it – who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism – and an unexpected connection between themselves.

After seeing many great reviews of this book on other blogs several months ago, I requested it from my library. It finally became available three weeks ago.

The book begins with Mikael’s libel case, and I was nervous for a chapter or two that the book would be filled with details of financial corruption that I tend to find dry (despite being an accountant by training). Lucky for me, 2/3rds of the book focuses on Harriet’s disappearance and Mikael’s investigative experiences. Larsson intricately weaves connections among many of the characters, and introduces multiple complicated relationships in a way that is, surprisingly, not confusing. As you may have gathered from previous reviews, my ability to feel the essence of the characters is essential to my satisfaction with a book Larsson achieved this well. Though the ending may have tied things up a little too neatly, it was satisfying.

Stieg Larsson died of a massive heart attack in 2004. He left the manuscripts of three completed but unpublished novels in a series. He wrote them for his own pleasure after returning home from his job in the evening, making no attempt to get them published until shortly before his death. The first of these was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The second, The Girl Who Played with Fire was published in 2006, and I will definitely be adding it to my TBR list. According to Wikipedia, the series was intended to be 10 books, and he had a partial manuscript for book four, along with synopses of books 5 and 6.

Edited to add: One down in my Mysteryreader Cafe challenge!

Productive Relaxation

I had today off thanks to a CEO who made Good Friday an official company holiday a few years back just because. Ah, the joys of working at a tiny company. I used to view days off as an opportunity to be busily productive will all kinds of non-work things. Now, I just enjoy the ability to not leave the house, and relax in the recliner with coffee and our fur babies.

I didn’t leave the house today, but man, was I productive. I finished a book I’ve been working on for 2 weeks (review to come), I am now only stitches away from finishing my super secret cross stitch project that I’ve been mentioning for months, I napped (a must on any day off), I made baked banana donuts (which were a big hit with the cute boy in the house), and I made homemade BBQ chicken pizza for dinner with the dough from this recipe (also a hit). Yay me!

Reconnecting

This weekend I spent two hours on the phone with someone I haven’t spoken with in at least ten years. (Thank you, Facebook.) It was one of those conversations where you start getting off the phone ½ hour before you actually hang up because you keep coming up with new things to chat about. The happy feelings of renewing a long-lost friendship stayed with me for the rest of the weekend. I was struck by what we had in common despite the distance that time, miles, and differing life paths had put between us. It is, I think, the truest kind of friendship.

I moved to a new town just before the start of 8th grade. The town, in general, was not all that accepting of people who weren’t born there. That, combined with the fact that many 14-year-old girls are catty and mean, meant that I was lonely for much of my first months in town. Tanya and I rode the same bus home from school. Sometime in the late fall we started talking during the rides home. I remember telling my mom about the nice girl I met on the bus, and she encouraged me to invite her over to our house, which I finally did.

Our houses were within walking distance of each other, and we spent tons of time together. She introduced me to Days of Our Lives during the time John Black was introduced, and I have found I can still recognize many of the characters when I see an episode once every few years. We shared babysitting duties for one of our teachers who had four kids. We served as statisticians for the baseball and football teams coached by that same teacher. (Getting out of school early to sit on the same bench with a bunch of cute boys…it was awesome!) We planned parties to be held at her mom’s house just outside of town. We laughed A LOT. Peer pressure took over at some point, and the people who wanted to include Tanya in their circle did not see me as a desirable addition. Blah, blah…[insert teenage drama here]. I moved to a new town two years before graduation, but we had parted ways long before that.

I went to college. Tanya moved across the country. She tracked my down during my college years, and we were sporadically in touch. She apologized for the choice she made about our friendship, and, being distanced enough from those days, I had no hard feelings. Sometime before I graduated from college, we lost track of each other.

Here we are in 2009, latecomers to the Facebook era, but, lucky for us, it’s still going strong. That connection, unbroken by time, distance, and life experience, found again, with such little effort, 18 years after it was first made is a testament to the qualities that make up the foundation of a person’s self. (Excuse my momentary philosophizing.) There is no doubt that I have grown as a person and live a more fulfilling existence that I did as a self-conscious, fitting-in-obsessed 14-year-old. I’m sure that, with different words, Tanya would say the same of herself. Yet, within 15 minutes of saying hello again, we were exchanging details of personal life events that had occurred during the years since we’d last talked. Whatever Tanya found approachable in me that first day on the bus, and whatever I recognized in her that made me confident enough to invite her to my house was still there. We are older and wiser, yet fundamentally the same.

In a time of much adjustment and evolution from self-sufficient single girl to healthily-dependent married girl, I find great comfort in the confirmation that no matter how much I’ve evolved, the core of me that has always been there has flourished in ways that leave it identifiable to the hearts of those who knew me “back when.”

See, I Told You I Actually Stitch

Since I'm still not so close to posting pictures of my most recent finishes, I thought I'd post these in the meantime. They were gifts for my mom.

This was not a dream...

I have at least one childhood "memory" that I'm aware of that didn't actually happen. It involves visiting the other side of my grandma's duplex while there was some kind of gathering taking place. The best I can figure, I had a dream that lodged itself in my long-term memory.

During the past couple days I was somehow reminded of a series of books I enjoyed during late elementary school. They were historical fiction, probably for teens, and each book was named after a girl...the only two I'm certain of are Joanna and Caroline. A lot of the books in the series were thick, at least in sixth grader terms - probably 250 pages or more. I remember keeping a log of how much time I spent reading one of the particularly long ones. (It's no wonder I thought I should be an accountant.)

The specific details of the stories have escaped my long-term memory, but I have fond feelings about those books. So, yesterday I went on Amazon to search for them. No luck. Even after various combinations of search criteria. Bookmooch, I thought. No luck. Maybe the online database for the library from which I actually check out those books 20 years ago. (Ack! 20 years ago?! I don't feel old enough to have actual memories of life 20 years ago.) Anyhoo, no luck, again.

I know I didn't dream these books. They existed! I swear! Does anyone else out there remember them?