In between assignments...

Lately I've been doing a lot of young adult reading for school. I like having this excuse to get caught up with the world of YA writing. I used to read a lot more of it than I do now. This is because I work at a library that doesn't have a YA  section and also because I used to read it as a sort of balm. What ailed me was being a student midwife, and there was much intelligent escapism to be had in the land of young adult fiction. I still have ailments but I guess I treat them with something else these days.

Anyway. I am discovering a lot of new authors and finding a lot that is worth reading. I've been posting my reviews (which I have to write for class) to my goodreads account, but maybe at the end of the semester I will do a sort of recap of what I read. So far my new favourites have been Susan Juby (already mentioned) and Jaclyn Moriarty. They both write such clever, quirky young women (and young men, for that matter).Their stories have a good mix of humour and depth. 

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This past weekend I had a challenge. This challenge was: find a dress to wear to a wedding. I have comletely ambivalent feelings about finding dresses for things. On the one hand - new dress! That's always nice. On the other hand - I have try on twelve thousand horrible poorly fitting dresses before I find one passable one! Not so nice. Part of the problem is that I seem to fall into some weird catagory of petite (but not quite), plus size (but not quite). And so I am on the fringe of normal dress sizes and can't find much that actually works for my figure. The other problem is that everything in the world of dress making is so ugly lately! 

(Uh oh.. I believe that I just allowed my age to show.)

But really. So many fake fabrics and appalling patterns. Who on earth wants to wear such repulsive colours? Where are the pretty vintage-inspired dresses? Where are the simple lines and rich tones? Where are the neat little details? Where is the artistry? Oh right, not at the mall. Curse you budget.

In the end I found a dress I am mostly happy with. I should take a picture of it, but probably not with me in it (I am not sure that I'm ready to start style-blogging).

Now I'm on the hunt for an appropriate necklace.

This is pretty gripping stuff, huh?

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At lunch time today I went out to run some errands and grab lunch. The errands were halfway successful. I found a bunch of not bad looking fake flowers for a display at the library. My preference for purple is completely transparent. I did not find a new fancy necklace to wear to the wedding next weekend. Ah well. And then lunch was also a bit of a disappointment. Tofu and veg in a weak, watery peanut sauce. Pretty unsatisfying.

On my way back to the office, walking along the sidewalk, clutching my bouquet of fake (mostly purple) flowers, my sorry lunch, and holding up my purple umbrella, I stepped in front of a white van as it pulled out of a driveway. It didn't see me, and I didn't see it, until the last minute. Luckily it wasn't going fast at all, and so I was not in as much danger as my rat-a-tat-tat heart may have implied. I was on the verge of being really rather irritated with this devil may care white van for pulling out of a blind driveway like that when I noticed that there was an ancient white cat curled up on the dash. She gave me a sleepy blink and I wasn't quite so irritated afterall.