Jeez, I've Gotten So Bad At This.

Gah. It's been over a month since I last blogged! Bad blogger, no cookie. Sorry, guys, I keep meaning to get back to regular blogging, but between my schoolwork, being at the kids' school, and just general craziness, I lapsed again. My apologies. I'm going to commit to blogging at least once a week to get back on track. I've been doing a lot of committing lately, so let's chat.

First up - kids are back in school, and it's like a breath of fresh air for me. Not to have them out of the house for six hours, I meant the social interaction again. I stepped up my involvement with the Parents' Association and the school itself this year, because I just enjoy being around everyone so much. I'm in the school almost every day because there's always some way to help, and honestly, what else am I going to do? Sit home and snarf down a sleeve of Oreos? Because I know that's what the alternative is. Plus, I'm lucky enough to have my kids in a school that welcomes parents - I'm taking advantage of it.

The boys are loving school this year, and they have two great teachers. That's a HUGE sigh of relief you hear right now. They've been pretty consistently lucky except for one hiccup that Heartbreaker had a couple of years ago.

Schoolwork for me is going along much better than I had whipped myself into a lather over. The management class that I feared with all of my being is a pretty interesting course, and the professor is a big part of that; she has found reading and lessons that aren't nearly as dry as I'd imagined management writing to be. I have a big project coming up in the next few weeks that I'm terrifying myself into inaction on (again), but I've committed to getting that started this week. I have lucked out so far in getting my work done before deadline, and I'd like to keep that streak going.

I'm committing also to losing some weight again. I'm tired of beating myself up. The bingeing is the hardest habit to break. I've been re-reading my old yoga books for some inspiration.

Which brings me to the reading list. Read so far:
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink - for years, I've loved that expression, "Left-handed people are the only ones in their right mind" because... well, because I'm left-handed. But this book goes beyond the cute little slogan and examines how we'll need to step up our game in the future, now that third-world countries are competing with us in the jobs arena, more and more work is being automated, and quite frankly, we just have too much stuff to want something just functional (The "three As" - Asia, automation, and abundance, as Pink puts it). His idea of developing right-brained skills, like empathy and symphony, to infuse our experiences with functionality and then some really appeals to me. Yes, I read this for school, but I ended up coming away with a lot more than work on an assignment.

Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Mental Illness by Mary Forsberg Weiland - I reviewed this one for the clubs, and it's your typical celeb spouse tell-all. On the one hand, I was impressed and somewhat empathetic with her struggles against bipolar disorder and getting clean, but on the other, it's so formulaic. Dysfunctional childhood. Check. Beautiful girl, begins modeling. Check. Falls in love with aspiring rock star. Check. Drug Abuse. Check. Diagnosis of psychological dysfunction that proves the feelings she’s had but was never able to describe all along. Check. Ultimate divorce from rock star so she can heal. Check. She name-drops like crazy and tends to adopt a whiny teenage girl voice when talking about the early years of being in love with Scott Weiland while he was dating and married to his longtime girlfriend. Gag me.

Management Basics for Information Professionals by G. Edward Evans & Patricia Layzell Ward - hey, I know it's a textbook for school, but I've got to read it, right? I'll go with what another Amazon reviewer wrote: "Not bad as textbooks go." I liked my textbook from last semester (Foundations of Library & Information Science) better; it had all the cool history information. Heck, I really liked my Professor Haycock's book (he's the dean at my school), The Portable MLIS, with The Whole Library Handbook 4, too. I didn't get to read both in their entirety, but I can see myself going back and reading these during some downtime.

Next up, I'm reading 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner & James K. Harter, Ph.D. It's another book for school, but again, I'm glad my professor has found material that livens up the whole management reading. I tend to like case studies, and this book has many of them. It goes down easier, and makes information stick better than just reading a textbook. According to the authors, there are 12 elements in order to be a great manager. Interesting concept, sad to see how many of these elements are absent today.

Other than school reading, I'm going between three books right now. I started a Supernatural novel, Nevermore. This time around, Sam and Dean are investigating some creepy murders that echo murders from Edgar Allen Poe's books. That's taken a backseat for a little while, because I started Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I kind of got sucked into a reading group that's done through the Dept. of Ed and the local schools, so I decided to give it a shot. So far, I really like it; I'm only about 20 pages in so I can't discuss too much, but I'll be back to talk about it.

Yoga Conditioning for Weight Loss is one of the yoga books I'm revisiting in order to get back to where I was years ago. It's not even so much about the weight loss - I need to get my head back into a good place. Once I get that down, everything else will follow. Getting into a regular yoga practice again, getting my head into the place that yoga brings me, is where I need to begin. I can't find a link to the book, but there are DVDs (AM and PM) that I also own that are great. Suzanne Deason is one of my two favorite yoga instructors, the other being Sarah Ivanhoe. Very relaxing, great starting point for introspection. Hopefully I'll have good news in a few weeks' times.

More to come, including knitting updates.