I have this unexpected sore spot at work. There are RNs all-around me not using their degree to its fullest potential, while I pine away at their side wishing I had the same opportunity. I wouldn’t be throwing it away.

RNs working at a lesser position as PSWs because “they don’t want the stress.” RNs so negative that they tear down the work and brick and mortar everyone else is working so hard to build. RNs who puff up because of new management positions but refuse to return to the humility of floor work even when there is NO ONE else to fill in.

Everyone’s got their own path in life. I know, but they have startled me into realizing a new self-describing adverb. Stephen forgive me. I’m ambitious.

How dare they.

and getting off my soapbox now…

My thoughts turn to a book I just finished about another ambitious female, one Flavia de Luce of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. It was an enjoyable story, a great beach book, but still somehow a disappointment. I know, I know. I was surprised too! Everyone just loves this book.

But once again, mystery is just not my favourite genre and no matter how endearing as a character Flavia is, it felt like a juvenile novel. The whole way through I kept thinking that I’d pass it to my 10 year old daughter to read until I reached certain circumstances at the end which both failed to endear me to the book and made it inappropriate for her.

I can see however why it is beloved. It had some wonderful humour and delicious chemistry. No, not romantic chemistry but the actual carbon tetrachloride and sodium bicarbonate sort. All of a sudden I was nostalgic for a Bunsen burner. Flavia carries the story – and chemical formulas – forward just like you were with her on the front of her bicycle, pedalling away, never slowing down. It’s a fast read at only 304 pages.

But the most unique thing about Flavia, something I do not know if I’ve ever seen in a novel, is her positive self-talk. In any encounter with an evil sister or curmudgeonly adult, she steadies – buoys – believes in herself.  And tells herself so! For that, she gets a “Go Flavia!” from me too.

We went to the Medieval Times restaurant in Toronto…

getting ideas for my library… i like these fabric panels on the wall!

the knights costumes were so beautiful that it was hard for me to remember to watch the games.

see, I was looking at these mini banners instead of the jousting going on like everyone else.

We were seated in the Red Knights section and cheered for him all night. He was very sweet and threw a flower really far into the crowd to reach our princess. She was thrilled and waved it ceaselessly. Her effort was not in vain, for he was in the end, the victor of the tournament, defeating the evil green knight thereby freeing the captured white shining prince!

A couple of days later, we had our own medieval tournament as we challenged ourselves to play a game of all-expansion Carcassonne, one of our favourite board games. Huzzah!

First the city is placed with its enclosing wall and then the river begins…

“In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To the river so deep
I must be lookin’ for something
Something sacred I lost
But the river is wide
And it’s too hard to cross
even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and stand on the shore
I try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find what I’ve been looking for
In the middle of the night”

Our river is finished and we have started on some large castles, even finished a few small ones…

the pieces add up fast and the kingdom grows rather large. we anticipated this by clearing everything else off the kitchen table and even adding the leaf to it. Here is where we stopped the game after several hours of play in one night.

and here is our final board! we managed to make a “pretty” one this time with very few holes. I love this game! all total it took us about seven hours to play, though in our defense it was our very first time playing with all of the add-on expansions so we had a lot of discussions about rules and what to do when.

If this looks like fun to you -- SOO much fun -- and you like board games, try these options…

Xbox Live Arcade has a simplified version of Carcassonne to play. That’s where I fell in love. It’s the ONLY game I have a perfect achievement score in. Darn hard work, but soooo much fun. hehe

Or, you could buy your own big box and play like us!

Toys R Us sells the basic Carcassonne and a few of the expansions. Wait, have I explained “expansion”? It means that you play it with the main game, not alone, it is only adding more pieces, rules, intrigue, strategy, FUN, you name it, to the original game.

The Big Box like we have probably would be found at your local specialty game shop. You know the one that sells all the collectible action figures and Dungeons and Dragons rule books.

Good evening to you, my lords and ladies.

ps. I wish my template were bigger to accomodate larger photos. These don’t look their best at such small size, but you can see the full images in my Picasa album if you click on any of them.

having organized two kitchen cupboards, folded a mountain of laundry and made deliciously greasy hamburgers for supper, I’m sitting down to tell you about something I love. because I need to unwind and I need to smile.

santa — yes virginia, there is a santa clause! — was very kind to me this year and left me an ipod Touch under the Christmas tree. when i first heard of them, i didn’t want one. what use would it be without a phone?! plus knowing i can’t afford a monthly iphone bill, my analysis was simple = don’t go there. Still, I’m so glad that the old guy from the north had the foresight and imagination to leave me one because…

it’s brilliant! the little thing doesn’t leave my side for long — no matter where i am in my day: home, work or out and about.

what do i use it for that makes me love it so much? so glad you asked!

it’s the apps.

there really is an app for whatever you can think of and then some.

Here is a list of my favourites and how I use them…

[full disclosure is that i simply love these apps and have recieved nothing to rave about them. hehe]

1. grocery gadget: keeps my grocery list, the pharmacy list, the walmart list, any shopping list your heart desires. and it’s like a puppy, you train it to do the tricks you want it to learn and it does!

like, say you can’t find an item in it’s database, add it and it will be there at your fingertips forever more. good boy.

best of all, it has a corresponding free web application that your family can use to share lists. so now hubby can add those hickory smoked almonds he’s been craving to my list when he gets an envie. cool.

2. evernote: one amazing monster and it’s hard to say what i don’t use it for. Ah! to start…

• remember how much I loved Annie Lammott’s book bird by bird and how i swore ever after to carry index cards to jot down inspiration and quotes and thoughts and references to the world around me and books i was reading. i did that. i really liked it and was so proud to have adopted a healthy habit.
• well now evernote keeps virtual index cards for me. i start a new “note” for each book to keep bits, page numbers, quotes i want to add to good reads and my thoughts. eventually that miasma become blog posts, act as a mini-diary of what i have read and just make me so happy. ’cause, no offense Annie but the index cards were sometimes hard to keep track of.
• evernote makes my living cookbook recipe archive mobile for use in the kitchen and at the grocery. invaluable.
• i save my current weekly menu, i save pdf files with photos of crafty things i want to make with the kids, i save lists of library books i want to show the kids, gift ideas, restaurants who have kids-eat-free-nights, my favorite podcast and firefox extensions list in case the computer explodes, i save everything. it’s my mobile me. LOVE it.

3. mobile RSS: lets me take my love of google reader anywhere. all my feeds are downloaded into it when i am online like at home and can be read when i am offline like at work on my coffee break. in other words, it lets me read my chicks anywhere! sweet.

and it works with…

4. read it later: which is like my online to-read list. articles i don’t have time to scroll through when i find them, recipes i can’t archive in Living Cookbook right away, pages i want to revisit to see the latest update like discussion posts or polls of which book the bookclub is choosing next

5. wordpress: definitely not to be forgotten. lets me jot down an inspiration, quote, anything that moves me to later flesh out into a real life blog post. i can write anywhere. wow.

6. podcasts: my  favourites are in iTunes, they sync to the Touch and voila, i can listen anywhere. we eventually bought a small portable dock and speaker system for it too. washing dishes and ironing are suddenly not quite so boring.

7. remember the milk: my to-do list software. it goes where i go.

• the positives: i have consistently used this program. adding and completing tasks is so easy, fast and i don’t forget. things don’t slip through my fingers like they used to do on occasion. i know what needs to be done and when. i choose to complete or postpone. somehow i feel like i have way more choice in my life and am leading my own life rather than letting my life lead me. that’s quite a benefit from a piece of software.
• the negatives: i don’t find that the mobile app syncs very well with the web application. you are supposed to be able to add tasks at either place and your lists should to be identical. it doesn’t seem that good to me. always a bit off. however, the whole point of it is that my to-do list is mobile and i find i use it on the Touch not on the Web 99.9% of the time and so just ignore the ingruency and go on my merry way.

EDIT several hours later… these negatives got me looking for something better and i found it. it’s called TouchToDo with the same basic functionality, a one-time small fee rather than a yearly subscription fee, plus a sync with Google calendar. win.

even better, it’s easier to use. and if you type in the word “call,” you add pick from your contacts to auto put in whoever you need to call. same when you type in “email.” you can make notes about an item on your to-do that is visible on the main list. wow, now i think RTM is royally ripping people off.

8. goodreads: has an iPhone app now and the Chapters bookstore where I shop has a Starbucks with free wi-fi which all adds up to being able to see my bookshelves when i really need them. yay!

9. stanza: free e-books in a beautiful and smart interface. no brainer. i’ve actually switched my whole purse philosophy because of this app. no more need for bulky purses to carry my latest read. i bought this one instead. (almost identical, same colour, only London Fog.)

10. tweetdeck: has long been my favourite twitter client anyway and i think it works even better on iPod devices than the desktop version. tweet me, i’m Kalanna.

12. always having a calculator to figure out how much that 20% off sweater is really going to cost me

13. alarm clock! night shift is crazy and sometimes my sleep schedule is wacked, even to the extent of affecting where i fall asleep. if i’m starting to doze off in a strange place, i can always be sure that i’ll wake when i need to.

14. words with friends: play Scrabble with your friends who are in the next room or really really far away. play with me, I’m Kalanna. lol

so, there you have it. this is what i do with my ipod Touch. so very very much. and the crazy thing is that you could do so much more in the States where public wi-fi is available at more places than in Canada.

“i can’t be the person that i was before this thing came along” — Lou, from the tv show Chuck, episode chuck vs. the truth, season one

this is my life
i love it

how technology can be all wires and tangle
yet when it is sorted out

be simple and perfect and full of form

The movie adaptation of this book suffers by the very nature of it’s genre. Some words should not leap from the page. Or rather, maybe not at the hands of certain directors in certain countries. Hollywood requires particular elements from its films, and Peter Jackson’s inclusion of them flips the essence of this poor story completely over. Something like a pancake. Same ingredients, same outcome and boundaries but without question the wrong side of the pancake. I was very disappointed.

(my analogy may seem slightly preposterous for, while I would argue there is a right and wrong side of a pancake, many would not. Stick with me for a minute.)

Beware: Spoilers begin!

For those of you who have read the book, you know that Susie Salmon is a beautiful girl who has been murdered by a neighbour and, within a hundred pages, is looking down on her family from an afterlife that is not quite the heaven she deserves. From there she watches her mother, father, siblings – friends too – move through the excruciating process of grieving the loss of a loved one taken away by violence.

While the now dead Susie is the title and central character of the beginning, her older sister Lindsey emerges through the remaining pages after the murder to be a twin spire. She very literally grows into the role of heroine. Or at least the one I believe in. The Lovely Bones became for me more of Lindsey’s story than Susie’s. How else, nay why else would the bones be described as “lovely”?

And yet in Hollywood there can be only one leading actress. Any others take a back burner of one kind or another. And in the movie, Saoirse Ronan – best known to me for her starring role in The City of Ember – supplants Lindsey, effectively moving the focus of the story off the healing of a family and onto the letting go of the family by the deceased. Definitely the flip side. The result? Much subtlety and character development is lost, and the whole dizzying heart-wrenching account stops spinning altogether.

Jackson attempts to reinforce this retelling with stunning panoramas that only a visual medium such as a film can provide. Someone should have reminded him how important actual story is. Flowers easily distract this man and, while beautiful, fail to deepen the viewer’s connection to the Susie while ignoring Lindsey. It’s too bad that the heart, which would render them so alive, is left out.

As counterweight, I must mention how superb the acting performances are. The actors carry this movie. I loved Wahlbert and Weisz. Shrank into the corner of the futon at Tucci. But in the end, The Lovely Bones as a movie was a creepy sad horrible story that falls way short of making up for the atrocity of putting yourself through the sadness of watching it. The redemption just does not shine through and seems too focused on the death, on the experience of death, than on the lives still being lived. Not surprising for the guy who made Meet the Feebles, but so much MUCH less from the same man who gave us the LOTR films.

ps. I don’t usually review movies – if this can be called a review – because I don’t care enough about them to do so. Books are my weakness and one true love, to be sure. And yet when I got talking to someone about this movie, my explanation of  dislike fell so far short of what I felt in my heart that it became this blog post as I was more and more determined to clarify. I’m glad to have taken up the challenge.

For the difficulty of laying down one thought after another, connecting them with stronger and stronger mortar and having a completed structure to present taught me an invaluable lesson… My opinion on this movie matters very little. It is not what I am saying, but how I am saying it that makes a person read, understand and – hopefully, please, hopefully – nod their head in agreement. My challenge is to write well, to pass on the infection of caring about something. Hopefully I’ve been sufficiently naughty. Peace.

omg my hands hurt. ouch. don’t even know why i am typing this. so delirious, still on a high, and probably will fall asleep in the next half hour but before i do, i must must must tell you… omg we did it! the hubby and i have been trying to get this one achievement in Halo 3:ODST for-e-ver. and tonight was the night!

Firefight: Crater… is ours.

it earned us a measly 10 gamer points for the two and a half hours of full-on teamwork, combat and fighting over the gravity hammers, but it feels like i climbed a mountain. there was this one hunter towards the end that i successfully evaded for what felt like ten minutes because all i had left to get him was a pistol and was aiming carefully from behind. and the bugs! and the invisible brutes! brutal but wow, what a rush. i don’t always feel like playing games, but when i do, this is why they are so different from reading books.

achy sore hands
but will never ever forget
that we did it
you and me
bugs be damned
we are legendary