Daily 5 - Year 3, Day 140

Today's Daily 5:

1. a restful night
2. hanging out at the zoo with a friend I've known since high school, and her daughter
3. the fun of being Auntie Lisa to a very cute munchkin
4. borrowing dad's very nice camera, and taking dozens of fun photos while at the zoo of said munchkin, some of which I'm really pleased with
5. a long hot shower to warm me up after finding myself feeling extremely chilled

Daily 5 - Year 3, Day 139

Yesterday's Daily 5:

1. enjoying a quiet day
2. treating myself to a little ice cream cone at the end of the night
3. watching the newest episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice
4. plowing through several things that needed doing
5. the ongoing anticipation of school, and the things Jesus is working in my heart right now

Friday Thoughts!

I'm curled up in a chair, in the sunshine, with a movie playing in the background.  I have lists to make and things to do, but I wanted to stop in here first!

Orientation yesterday, was, well, boring!  But, it totally hit home that I'm starting classes on Tuesday - that my nursing dream and goal is becoming a reality!  So cool.

So, today I have lists to make - things that need to be done this weekend, mostly.  Things like shortening the scrub pants I bought yesterday - the pants that are currently long enough that if I want them to touch the floor, I need to hold the waistband at armpit level.  Things like reading and cleaning and organizing and sleeping.  Things like watching the newest episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice.  And things like taking a CPR course.

It's going to be a good weekend - to rest and recoup, and to fully prepare myself to dive in with my whole being on Tuesday.

Daily 5 - Year 3, Day 138

Today's Daily 5:

1. nursing orientation.  well, not so much the orientation itself (which was super boring) but the reality that this program is finally beginning.
2. the moment of looking at myself in the mirror of the bookstore dressing room, with a full outfit of scrubs on, and almost wanting to giggle with glee as it hit home again that this really is happening for me!
3. finding one textbook used, and almost all of the rest of the books and uniforms I needed to be easily available, thus avoiding mondo bookstore lines that will happen next week.
4. having a few little conversations with fellow students, also excited to be in the program
5. Vietnamese food from my favorite place on campus
6. a challenging appointment
7. being approached by my favorite two year old boy at house church, asking me to lift him up and hold him, and then touching my face and identifying my facial features with tiny, soft fingers
8. watching God speak and a theme emerge in the bits different people heard from him as we prayed about direction for the coming year
9. three appointments in three different corners of the city, which gave me almost 4 hours of transit/bus time today, in which to read (finished another novel)
10. the chance to gather and pray together as friends at house church tonight

Summarizing a Year of Reading - 2011

If you're new to my blog, you may not know that I keep a number of reading lists from the last several years on this page.  You can find lists dating back to 2007, in a variety of styles, tracking either the entirety of the books I read in a year, or only those books that were non-fiction.

Earlier this week, I completed my first book of 2012 (one that was admittedly started in 2011), and so I updated my list to start tracking my reads in 2012, and tabulated the final results.

My goal at the beginning of the year was to read at least one to two books per month.  I handily surpassed the score of two books per week!  Lots of time on city transit, commuting to and from classes and work, along with unexpected amounts of free time definitely contributed to this being one of my most prolific years of reading in the last decade.

I finished 140 books.  6 of those were audio books.  34 were non-fiction, and 106 were fictional.

I revisited a number of old favorites - easily read novels by Karen Kingsbury and Lori Wick, along with a re-read of the entire Mitford series and the Father Tim novels by Jan Karon.

I read quite a few memoirs, (accounting for a large portion of the non-fiction) and read a large number of titles dealing with the lives of women in the Islamic world.  Among those, my favorites included "The Butterfly Mosque" by G. Willow Wilson, and "In the Land of Invisible Women" by Qanta Ahmed.

When it comes to audio books, my favorites were diverse.  I loved a revisit to "Angry Conversations With God" by Susan Isaacs.  Other strong recommendations include "Bossypants" by Tina Fey, and "Antarctica on a Plate" by Alexa Thomson.

In terms of Christian or religious titles, I enjoyed the novel "The Constantine Codex" by Paul L. Maier (though I'd be quick to add that this title still doesn't measure up to the brilliance of the first novel by Maier that I ever read, "A Skeleton in God's Closet").  I revisited Robert Benson's "Between the Dreaming and the Coming True" and found it easily as profound on a second trip through as it was the first time I read it, when it seemed to speak to my very soul.  I also found myself challenged and impacted by Dan Allender's "Sabbath".

It was a year full of awesome reads (and lots of the brain candy sort as well)!  I have the goal of reading one to two books a month again in 2012, and am hoping to move through dozens of partially finished or never opened titles that already reside on my shelves, as well as take advantage of our local library, and hopefully encounter a number of new authors to challenge, amuse, inspire, educate and shape me as I make my way through the coming year.

(If you have suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them in the comments below!)