Water for Elephants

One word: AWESOME!

I just read (actually a few weeks ago) this book "Water for Elephants." At first I was a little skeptical about it, cause lets be honest... the title is bizarre. But I wasn't expecting to really love it.



I am a difficult reader to grasp. My attention needs to be grabbed almost immediately or otherwise I will not finish the book. So I was a little worried that this story is set in the 1930s. The first line of the book is ...

I am ninety or ninety-three. One or the other.



The story of Jacob Jankowski, a ninety or ninety-three year old man who reminisces of his days working in the circus. He takes us back to the 1930s when he was 23 years old. A vet student at Cornell, his life takes a drastic change when his parents die and he is left with nothing. He runs away and more or less joins the circus by accident. How do you join a circus by accidnet?! You jump a train, who just happens to house a circus!

Jacob falls in love with Marlena, the wife of the schizo animal trainer. I will stop right there cause I obviously don't want to give more away cause I know you will read it and I would hate to ruin it for you :)

Definetly a must read!

Sidenote: It is currently being made into a movie, so stay tuned. Can't wait to see it :)

Downtown Knoxville

We headed to downtown Knoxville a few weeks ago with the camera in hand in hopes of getting out and doing something different and maybe see something halfway interesting. Its downtown, so anything goes.


Downtown Knoxville is kind .... artsy in comparison to downtown Las Vegas that I am used to. No hobos or crack whores! Such a huge change of pace for us :) So anyway every year they have a Dogwood Arts Festival and the Saturday we were there they had a Chalk Walk.


Amateur artists creating AMAZING art on the sidewalk. It was freaking awesome! I was so in awe and it made me wish I wasn't artistically challenged.



This one was my favorite! I wish we would have stuck around to see the finished product. Look at that detail!


I think this one was done by some kids.... Impressive!

Sweet Coffee

Happy hump day! I would like to thank Starbucks, without whom this day would not be possible. :)

Good Reads

So I have been trying to expand my horizons a bit. I have been spending alot more time curled up on the couch with a good book then I do watching mindless TV.

I read The Time Travelers Wife after I got it for Christmas and I enjoyed it alot. It was an unconventional love story but yet sweet. I watached the movie once I was done with the book and to be honest it wasn't as good. Are the movies ever as good as the book? I guess not. So do me and yourself a favor, read the book first. It will make so much more sense. Trust me ;)

I recently found a used book store by my work called McKay's and I was in heaven. This place was huge! I have done my fair share of googling and wikipedia and I was looking for something very specific, and this is the WRONG place to go when you are looking for a particular book or author. But I did pick up an old beat up copy of Sense & Senseibility by Jane Austen. I want to challenge myself and read "meatier" books, you know?

I only recently started reading Sense & Senseibility but so far so good!

Valentines 2010

This Valentines day we decided to keep it low key. Since we are saving for a house we decided not to buy each other cheesy presents that would just end up being put in a drawer somewhere. So I surprised Brandon with a special Valentines Day breakfast. I went all out with the hearts!

Even the butter was heart shaped!



Love you Brandon!

Time

Where did January go?! I can't believe we are in the month of February and Valentines day is next week!

I have been a busy girl. We have decided to not renew our lease at our apartment and we are looking to buy our first house! Very exciting stuff, except that now the search is on to find an awesome house that we love and we have to be out of our apartment by March 3rd. That is like three weeks away. So we have pretty much come to terms with the fact that we will not be finding a house by March 3rd so it's a good thing I have gracious in-laws that have offered to let us stay with them until we find the house of our dreams (that fits in our budget of course).

So I have booked a storage unit to house all our stuff in the mean time. I tried to start packing in January unsuccessfully. I packed a few boxes here and there but nothing like I hoped. I keep picturing that March 1st will roll around and I will still have so much to pack and then being rushed and throwing stuff in random boxes! I hope to start moving some boxes into our storage unit this weekend... wish me luck!

As far as the house hunt is concerned... not so good. It's slim pickin's. We have not found anything that we loved yet and it is extremely frustrating. Actually we did find a nice house however we (I) took to long to make up our (my) mind so someone else beat us to it. I am kicking myself for that one. You live and you learn and I will be ready next time :)

On a different note... We got some snow last week. Bummer! I hate the cold. I stayed indoors all day! After the snow all the trees had icicles on the branches and it looked so pretty! And it all of a sudden occurred to me why people put tinsel on Christmas trees. Its supposed to look like icicles!










I will never look at tinsel the same way again! :)

True Vintage

I have noticed latley that all the things I love are a bit ...worn to put it lightly.

This shirt belonged to Brandon when he was about 12. He gave it to me... actually I more or less stole it, when we were dating and have been wearing it ever since. When I first took it I wore it out in public. Now, as you can tell, it's not really appropriate to wear in public. In part to the large gaping hole in the boob area.

Here is a close up of the hole in question and if you look closely, the matierial is so worn that the shirt is virtually see-through! But I love this shirt and I cannot part with it. It is so unbelievably comfortable to sleep in.