For Me Fridays

It seems to be conventional wisdom that women tend to put others before themselves. The result is that we don't take care of ourselves like we should.

I don't know about overseas, but for some time here in the US, there has been a campaign by the American Heart Association to make women aware of heart disease because it is the number one cause of death among women - one woman per minute. Part of the reason that women are unaware they are having a heart-related health problem is that heart attack symptoms in women are often mistaken for minor ailments that women ignore or think they can deal with later.



I don't know about you, but this is my usual M.O. There I am, *someplace where I absolutely cannot make a call, and I think, "I really need to call my doctor/eye doctor/dentist. I need to do this when I get back to my office." I get back to my office, but do I remember to make the call? No. Because there are eleventy-billions things to do before the end of the day/week/whatever upcoming deadline. Then, I'll get home and realize that I didn't call to set up an appointment.* Repeat from * to *. Then a week goes by, then a month, then I'm asking myself, "What year was my last exam?"

So as a way to start changing with how I tend to myself, I'm starting For Me Fridays. I'm using my lunch hour on Fridays (which tend to be relatively sane compared to my calendar for the rest of the week) to make the appointments.

Annual exam with my doctor - check. Annual eye exam - check. Now I need to schedule a dental appointment.

Too bad knitting doesn't drown out the sound of a dental drill.

Rainbow

Up until this week, the weather has been unusually mild.

There was a huge rainbow that I just had to photograph because it's unusual (for me, at least) to see both ends of the same rainbow.

Chicago

A few weeks ago, I attended a conference in Chicago.

This is the Chicago Cultural Center.







And the famous water tower.


Oh, how I love this city!

Channeling Andy Rooney

Why do hotels believe they need to pile the beds with decorative pillows?

I recently stayed at a chain that rhymes with "schmyatt." This is the bed. (Which, by the way, they claimed was a queen-size bed. HA! For pygmies, maybe. We have a queen size bed at home. I beg to differ. I'll save the rest of my opinions regarding my stay for my letter to the CEO.)

Notice that there are already 3 pillows on the bed. So that makes 6 pillows (if you count the 3 on the other bed in the room).



Then there are the decorative pillows. These are the other pillows that were on the two beds. They take up a whole corner of the room.



And what's with the length of fabric that they drape over the foot of the bed? It's not a bedspread. I can't imagine it gets washed frequently (ewwww). It's just another decorative piece that ends up on the floor, along with the rest of the pillows.

Maybe this is why a bare-bones continental breakfast costs an arm and a leg (not including room service fee and gratuity). Someone's gotta pay for all those freaking pillows.

A New Feature

I've added a new gadget to the blog - or at least re-named a section, added to it, and will continue to add to it, albeit not as frequently as I'd like.

Over on the right is a "Good Reads" section where I'm listing books I've recently read and very much enjoyed. I won't post in-depth reviews or critiques. I also won't post books I read that are work-related (mainly because they are boring, but also because I can't imagine any of you would be even vaguely interested). While The Poisoner's Handbook would seem to be work related, it wasn't. And it's an extremely well-told story that weaves a number of sub-plots altogether. I found it fascinating and hard to put down.

If you'd like to read interesting reviews, head on over to Liz's blog at Knitting on the Green. If you scroll down, on the right hand side is "relevant metadata." Click on "books" and you'll find her many, many reviews. She does a far, far better job of it than I ever could.

As for the books I have listed so far, if you are looking for light reading, (vacation reading, I call it) that's a pleasure to read from cover to cover, I highly recommend Miss Buncle's Book, Miss Buncle Married, and Greenery Street. These are the kind of books that leave you disappointed that you've reached the end - you want to remain immersed in the lives of the characters and find out what happened to them after the author put down her pen.

The others are "deeper" reads that don't necessarily have a happy ending, but that have stuck with me. I find myself thinking about the story long after I have finished the book.

For those of you in the US interested in the books published by Persephone, they do ship to the US and it really isn't cost prohibitive. While they can only ship surface rather than airmail, I've never had a shipment take more than 2 weeks - even right before Christmas. (Visit their website and get onto their mailing list for their biannual magazine. You won't regret it.)

So what book(s) do you recommend?