Workout Wednesday

Workout Wednesday – May 2013

As I mentioned in my April recap I’m starting a couple of non-book posts each month, the first was Culture Corner, and this is my second monthly series where I’m going to talk about my workout experiences and holding myself accountable.

Commonwealth CrossfitTwo months ago this past Friday I joined Commonwealth CrossFit which is less than ten minutes from my house. For various reasons I’d become incredibly unhealthy and unhappy over the past year and I knew things needed to change. I chose CrossFit for a couple of reasons, but it took me awhile to start because I needed to make sure I could afford it and was mentally ready for it. Well I finally was able to pay for it, yay new job, but I found out pretty quickly how unprepared mentally and physically I was. But that was two months ago and I’m still going strong so go me! And as no post is complete without a photo, I stole one from the Facebook page. This post is mostly just a recap of what I’ve done the past two months and what I’m hoping to get out of it.

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Culture Corner

Culture Corner – May 2013

As mentioned in my April Recap post I’ve decided to add a couple of feature posts once a month and here is my first one and I hope you enjoy it! I’ve decided to call it Culture Corner because 1) I love alliteration and 2) I figured Museum Monday’s was too limiting on both the day of the post and the subject matter. I apologize in advance for the length of this article. I saw two exhibits and took a lot of pictures.

I’ve been a member of the MFA for most of my time in Boston and since I’ve been here, I’ve seen some pretty cool exhibits like Chihuly’s Through the Looking Glass (2011), Alex Katz Prints (2012), Mario Testino’s In Your Face (2012/13) and The Postcard Age Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection (2012/13) among others.

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2013 Challenges, Books

Book 195: Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World – Sharon Waxma

Sorry for the long post in advance, it’s been a long time since I’ve read a book about museums and antiquities and I forgot how much I love them and how much they make me think!

This book has been on my to-be-read shelf since July of 2011 and I can’t believe I waited this long to read it! I will never forget my first Anthropology class in undergrad and the professor going off on a tangent about the looting of the museums after the fall of Saddam Hussein. It pretty much guaranteed I would be an Anthropology major. (I later switched to cultural anthropology and focused on gender in the media, but still the people were awesome!) The intrigue, the drama, the affairs and the crimes, it could be a spy novel if it were fiction and not fact! This book will count as a bonus book for my 2013 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

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Updates

April 2013 Recap

What a month. I can’t believe how fast the month has gone and things were definitely not boring here in Boston with the marathon bombings and ensuing chaos. I’m glad to see the month go, but not ready for May or the summer that follows shortly after.

April felt like a short month for reading, but I actually read an above average six books: one for book group, three challenge books (two pre-listed one additional) and two ‘trashy romance’ novels/galleys. (I don’t really think they’re trashy, well some are and some I read are, but I just love to call them that.)

Recent Acquisitions

Well I was doing really good about not buying books and then in the last week of the month all of a sudden I bought three books and downloaded two galleys (one of which I completed); story of my life right? I  bought one kindle book for $1 (it sounded too good not to buy) called No Strings by Nick Nolan which I’m excited about. In addition I bought two physical books, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, Peark and Sir Orfeo translated by J.R.R. Tolkien, above left, which I saw on someone else’s blog and I wanted a copy; and I purchased a copy of Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, above right, for my May Books into Movies book group.

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Book Group, Books

Book 191: Cujo – Stephen King

One of my friends put it best, ‘So apparently Cujo is just a bad lifetime movie with a rabid dog’ and although he was referring to the movie, it pretty much sums up the book as well. I just was not impressed and couldn’t get into the novel. The major plus side was that it felt like a short novel.

If you haven’t figured it out yet I didn’t enjoy this book. I am glad I can now say I’ve read a Stephen King novel but overall it was lack-luster and disappointing. I didn’t choose to read this novel on my own, it was the selection for our April Books into Movies library book group. So my disparaging review is totally legit. I did have major issues with the formatting of this book. I read this book through Overdrive from my local library and somewhere during the conversion process a lot of mistakes were processed. It was really distracting and felt more like a galley than an actual published book.

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