The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -- Take 2

I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest a few days ago, and it was definitely different from the first two.  Not really worse or better.

This one was more legal drama than the previous books, although there still was a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of sneaking around, spying, and hacking computers.

Our final installment brings to a close the investigation into the complicated history of The Girl, Lisbeth Salander.  The sweeping, conspiracy theorist's dream involves secret police, international spies, corrupt bureaucrats, pedophiles, and even more secret police.  The pacing is good; it builds to a crescendo, but ends with a predictably unsatisfying but mandatory denouement.

I enjoyed listening to this on audio because I didn't have to stumble over the complicated Swedish names, although I think the fact that I didn't have to sound them out a few times before I got rolling also made it easier to get the characters mixed up in my head.

As with the others, it's compelling reading but mediocre writing.

Goal #21

Goal #21: follow the two minute rule

I haven't read David Allen's book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, but I did come to learn about one thing he has in it, so I picked up a copy and read those few pages.

It's the two minute rule, and it goes like this: if there's something you need to do which will take a maximum of two minutes, do it now.  His theory is that, at more than two minutes, the amount of time and energy you spend adding the thing to your to-do list, worrying about it later, and so on, exceeds the amount of time you would just spend doing it now.

Allen does acknowledge that the selection of two minutes as the time limit is somewhat arbitrary but seems to work well on a regular day.  If you have a longer stretch of time, maybe you can go as high as 10 minutes, or if you're super busy you can cut it down to 30 or 60 seconds.

I learned all this a couple weeks ago; it's been percolating and I've said to myself a few times, "Oh, it won't take long, just do it now."  But this week I'm really going to try to be good about it!

Recap of Goal #20:
- Sunday night: 7.5 hours
- Monday night: 6 hours.  I barely eked this one out, and I did it at the cost of a workout (although if you factor in the time it took me to fall asleep, I probably just missed my goal).  But here's my question: both sleep and exercise are good for you.  Which is more important?  In order to get my workout in, I would have had to cut it down to 5:15 of sleep at most, probably more like 5 hours even.  Is that worth it?
- Tuesday night: 5.5 hours.  So close, but...UGH!  The most annoying part of this is that I could have had my six hours (or I could have gotten a quick jog in).  I was meeting some people on Wednesday morning, and the e-mail said "5:30." To me, that meant "be there at 5:30."  But they were all meeting and driving together and I was coming from elsewhere, so their plan was to meet at 5:30, be there at 6:00.  So many possibilities for that extra 30 minutes, but instead I just sat around twiddling my thumbs.
- Wednesday night: 6.25 hours
- Thursday night: 7 hours
- Friday night: 7 hours
- Saturday night: 7 hours

So, all in all, not bad!

A Note to Graduates

For those of you who are graduating and have yet to figure out what you’re going to do with yourselves this year or for the rest of your lives, you are in good company.  (And I'm not talking about mine, although that's also true!)

Last year, Stephen Colbert, now proudly sporting a diploma from Northwestern University, addressed the graduates with some hard-earned and slightly tardy wisdom regarding practical selection of a major (full address available here).  After explaining how his diploma box contained a ripped-off piece of legal paper saying, “See me. Dean Cathy Martin.” He goes on:

“So remember, just by graduating today on your graduation day, you are starting your career way ahead of me – be proud of that.  Because Northwestern is a school to be proud of – in academics, athletics, science, public service.  It represents humanity at its best.

And on Dillo Day, it represents humanity at its worst.

Now, for you parents, Dillo Day is a festival that started in 1972 to honor the armadillo.  That is the best explanation I can offer, I’m sorry. [Parental applause.]

Today, evidently armadillos are honored by drinking Four Loko out of a Super Soaker while dancing to the New Pornographers in a drunken mosh pit filled mostly with National Merit Finalists. [Student cheers and laughter.]

Northwestern's alumni list is truly impressive.  This university has graduated bestselling authors, Olympians, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Peabody winners, Emmy winners, and that's just me!  And I loved, I loved my time at Northwestern.  I was a transfer student ... [transfer student cheers] ... wow ... I was a transfer student from a small all-male college in Virginia where I had been a philosophy major.  But I decided to switch to something with stronger job prospects: theater major."

There's hope!

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 35

Otherwise titled: France and a Home Kitchen

Wednesday was a day of delicious food and long conversation!  First I had lunch with S at Cafe Provencal (where I went about a year ago for lunch with T).  S and I missed out on some of the cute French-ness of the place because we sat outside, but it was such a lovely day, it just couldn't be helped!  I had the very predictable choice of French onion soup, with their quiche du jour, which was bacon. (Can you go wrong with that?)

And dinner was a treat too!  Dad is in town for some stuff, so we went to dinner at a fairly new restaurant called Home Wine Kitchen.  Their menu changes weekly, and last night I had the chef's menu: an appetizer of pork belly, chicken cassoulet main course, and dessert of lemon and olive oil bread pudding.  It was delicious!

I'd like to go back there for No Menu Monday, where you can give a few pointers about what you like and don't like, and the rest is up to the chef.  They have one more interesting quirk: wine pricing.  Aside from their reserve list, all bottles are $30 and all glasses are $8.

What I Watched -- Breaking Dawn, Part I

Ugh, why?  It's like a train wreck and I just can't look away.  Every movie I see, I hate Bella more and more, although in Breaking Dawn, Part I, Kristen Stewart does manage to do a stellar job of looking like she's just seconds from death through most of this installment.

On top of that, I have to say that they got one thing just perfect.  The fact that they call it The Twilight Saga, emphasis on the "saga," hits the nail on the head.  It implies a certain amount of unnecessary melodrama, and if that's what you're looking for, you won't be let down.

Bottom line: getting worse, not better.  So why do I feel a compulsive need to finish the series?

What I Watched -- War Horse

I'm a sucker for movies about animals, especially dogs and horses.

It's for that reason that I decided to see War Horse, the film/play/book which has gotten so much press in the last year or so.  And I'm happy to say that the horse does not disappoint.  As for the rest of the movie?  It's pretty blah Disney stuff.

After the horse, my next favorite character is probably the other horse, followed by the Grandpa (played by longtime French actor Niels Arestrup), and then all the people who take care of the horse (including Tom Hiddleston).  (Are we noticing a theme here?)  Benedict Cumberbatch, who has a fabulous name but only a bit part which he handles as well as could be expected, has drawn attention lately as Sherlock Holmes in a new BBC series I'd like to check out.

Bottom line: no surprises - it's exactly the story you'd expect.

An 11th Ring, and a Loss

Boo hiss.  It stinks when we lose.  I met T downtown for the game last night, and somehow we managed to have fun despite a loss to our North Side rivals.

The loss was annoying because our record was so much better going into the game (20-14, to the Cubs's 14-20), but it is what it is.  The Cubbies capitalized on our many errors to take a 6-4 win, although they made a number of on-field gaffes themselves, and stranded 24 men on base.  We didn't do so well either, leaving 13.  It was just bad ball all around (summary).

Also, what kind of hot dog stand are you if you run out of hot dogs?  We went to get our dinner 'round about the 4th inning, and our favorite stand announced, not 30 seconds after we jumped in line, that they had run out of dogs.  What?  How does that happen?  You serve one thing!  The woman at the hot dog stand had said it would be 20 minutes before she had more ready for purchase.  We were hungry, so headed across the way to one of the regular concession stands.  Slowest line in history.  Seriously.  It took so long that eventually we just gave up and went back over to wait out the last 5 minutes before our delicious dogs with grilled onions were sizzling away.  After all that waiting, they sure were good!

Super bonus!  Remember how last summer, I got to fondle a World Series ring? (Although that day, the Cards won.)  Well, there's another one now!

On the inside, all the series counts are engraved...

...and an extreme close up of one side of the ring reveals the rally squirrel!

What I Watched -- The Space Between

The Space Between is the story of a wise-beyond-his years but irritating Muslim boy and an angry, disillusioned flight attendant who drinks too much.

Melissa Leo plays Montine.  She's put in charge of the Omar, an unaccompanied minor travelling on a flight from New York to LA on the morning of 9/11.  When they land in California and discover all that's happened in the several hours since they left New York, they are left on their own.  The entire airline industry is in crisis mode and in no position to supervise the boy.

Montine isn't really in any position to supervise him either, but she has no choice when she discovers that Omar's dad worked in one of the towers.  She takes it upon herself to return him to New York, and what follows is a road trip movie with unconventional characters but very conventional sentiments.

Bottom line: cute story, but contains no surprises.

Goal #20

Goal #20: get at least six hours of sleep a night.

What with two regattas in one weekend, and one of them in Philadelphia, I didn't get much sleep the last several days.  So this week it's my goat to get at least six hours per night.  And with that in mind, I'm off to bed!

Recap of Goal #19: here's what I read:
Sunday: oops (turns out Sunday is a bad day to start these goals, because usually I don't think about them until Monday)
Monday: Charles Monroe Dickenson, Abraham Lincoln (found here rather by accident)
Tuesday: selections from Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney
Wednesday: oops again
Thursday: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Friday: The Sunrise Ruby by Rumi
Saturday: The Necklace by Osip Madelstam, trans. Christian Wiman (from the April 2012 Atlantic)

Quote of the Day

It's like Potter Stewart's quote about pornography (which has its own Wikipedia page!) in Jacobellis v. Ohio:

"There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around the house.  You can't know the limit beforehand, but you will know it when you've reached it.  I believe this."
-- Alice Munro