Random Non-News

I meant to post this yesterday, but I fell asleep at 8:00 p.m. while getting Nathan to bed.

First of all, I finally saw Sex and the City 2. You know when you have that movie that you attempt to see several times and it just never pans out? That's how it was with SATC2 for me. I meant to go see it several times in the theater, and various activities got in the way. Then for some reason it took forever for Netflix to get it to me. And last week they had it at the library, except I couldn't get it because it was on the "Hot Copies" shelf and I was already getting a book off that shelf, and you're only allowed to have one Hot Copy at a time.

So thankfully it came as my Netflix movie late last week. And you know what my assessment was? The Sex and the City franchise should have quit after the first movie. The first movie was like going to a high school reunion; it was fun to catch up with the characters who you came to know and love on the TV show. The second movie came two years later, and it was like, who cares what they're up to now? And the whole thing felt so dumb and cliched. Their outfits were suddenly too over-the-top. Their personalities were like unlikable caricatures. Like Samantha went from being your trampy friend to just being flat-out crass and disgusting. And as a nit-picky detail, Sarah Jessica Parker needs to have short hair now. I think maybe they kept the long waves to be sort of quintessentially Carrie, but she's too old and they make her face look ridiculously long.

The book I was getting from the Hot Copies shelf, the one that prevented me from getting the SATC2 DVD, was A Gate at the Stairs. And that was really disappointing. Maybe I'm just a really pathetic reader, but I don't like a book where 2/3 of the book could be cut out because it's just pointless description of feelings and scenery. Books need to be able to compete with the constant action of TV, movies, and the Internet. Page after page where nothing happens just doesn't cut it.

At the same time, I picked up a random library book called America + The Pill by Elaine Tyler May. I had forgotten about Elaine, but another book of hers got me out of a jam my first quarter of college when I proposed a 12-15 page paper about Cold War propaganda (along the lines of my favorite documentary in high school, Atomic Cafe) and then all I could find at the library was a random pamphlet from like 1952 that suggested that you might want to make sure to sweep out pine needles and other flammable materials from around your house in case of a nuclear bomb. (You know, because if nuclear war strikes, it's gonna be the pine needles that kill you.) Anyway, you can't write a 12-15 page paper based on a pamphlet, but thankfully I found Elaine Tyler May's book at a Borders and bought it.

Her current book, America + The Pill, is a retrospective about the various scientific and social implications of the birth control pill, written on the pill's 50th anniversary (in 2010). It's always good to read something non-fiction every once in awhile to make sure my brain is still functioning. And it brings together a bunch of facts I know from women's studies and from watching Mad Men, and also makes me feel like I'm part of a very significant historical every night when I swallow my pill.

But sometimes you need something lighter, so I'm grateful that Young Adult book Matched has come in for me at the library! This book was a recommendation from SuperIma Leigh Ann, and if it's half as good as Hunger Games I'll be happy. You know what's the best about YA books? You can read them really quickly and feel so accomplished.

Speaking of YA books, I was thinking about how excited I was as a kid when I got a new Baby-Sitters Club book. I was thinking about how I never get that excited about any particular book in my adult life. I mean I like to read as much as I did as a kid, it's just ... could somebody please recommend a book I could get as excited about as I was about Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #3? (Which, I just looked up on Amazon, because no, I did not know the exact title of Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #3 off the top of my head. Turns out, it's Baby-Sitters' Winter Vacation.)

In non-book news, I have decided to do individual personal training when my partner training with Amy runs out. I'm feeling guilty about the financial extravagance of this, because in actuality I can just lift weights on my own. But I had to lift weights on my own for the last three weeks due to scheduling issues with Amy and the trainer (vacations and whatnot), and I really like it better when the trainer tortures me than when I torture myself. Because really, I torture myself a lot worse than the trainer tortures me. And I try to do all this stuff without a break, and then I'm sweating and exhausted. So, I am switching over to 30-minute individual sessions, and this may be on top of sessions with another partner as well, but the thing is it's not like my payment on the individual sessions ever expires.

Weight Watchers ... did not go as well this week. I only lost 0.4 pounds. To be honest, I was a very bad eater this week. At one point I went to Culver's for a medium Crazy for Cookie Dough concrete around 9 p.m. because Nathan's bedtime stressed me out so badly. (For California peeps: Culver's is a frozen custard place, like ice cream only fattier. And a concrete is sort of the equivalent of a blizzard at the Dairy Queen.)

Oh and over the weekend Katie and I are seeing Hair, and they better get naked!