Happy Monday! Or… Tuesday. But after getting insanely sick this weekend, sleeping for 30 out of 36 hours, and then having to move my travel schedule to fly out Tuesday morning… my brain is a bit confused. Usually, Sunday is when I go to bed super early in preparation for my early morning flight, Monday is the longest day of the week, and then by Tuesday I start to get on a normal schedule (just in time for me to fly home on Thursday night and have another day that throws me off, since I work a full day but then don’t get home till midnight or so.)
Fortunately for me on the back end, I’m staying in Dallas this weekend and not going home until next Thursday – so I get quite a few “normal” days before I’m on an airplane again. Or at least, as normal as consulting gets – meaning that I have a client dinner tonight and a quarterly board meeting tomorrow night, so I won’t actually have time to myself until Thursday. When to relax? When to work out? Your guess is as good as mine; I’m just hoping that all the extra sleep this weekend will carry me through.
Speaking of relaxing, though, my “15 books in 30 days” challenge is going pretty well so far – it’s nice to get back to reading after I neglected it for so long. As a kid, I would read multiple books in a night (what can I say, in addition to being a fast reader I was also a total nerd), and it’s nice to have something forcing me to get back to that. In those days, I read a ton of “Babysitters Club” and “Sweet Valley Twins”, despite my mom’s efforts to get me to stop reading “that junk”; now, my taste is much more eclectic. So far this month, I’ve read nine books:
1. The Red Queen – Philippa Gregory
2. The First 20 Minutes – Gretchen Reynolds
3. You Are an Ironman – Jacques Steinberg
4. French Kids Eat Everything – Karen Le Billon
5. The Singles – Meredith Goldstein
6. Get Financially Naked – Manisha Thakor
7. My Stroke of Insight – Jill Bolte Taylor
8. Packing for Mars – Mary Roach
9. Silver Girl – Elin Hilderbrand
(And don’t forget you can always check out the GoodReads widget in my sidebar to see what I’ve read most recently, along with my ratings/reviews.)
Part of where I’ve gotten the time for all that reading has been cutting out some of the crap TV that I watch. I realized that there are a lot of shows I watch out of habit – because they autorecorded on my DVR that I set years ago and now I feel like I have to go through it like a to do list. I’m not going to the point of cutting TV totally (far from it!), but I do want to be more mindful about what I watch, and try to choose only shows that I truly enjoy and can’t wait to see. Being a planner, I’ve done what many others are doing this time of year and plotting out my fall TV schedule.
(Why is it arranged by days when I DVR shows and watch them a week later and therefore have no idea what day they originally aired? Eh, had to organize it somehow.)
Tuesday
8pm: Hart of Dixie
9pm: Mindy Project???
10pm: Private Practice
Wednesday
10pm: Nashville???
Thursday
9pm: Grey’s Anatomy, Glee, Office
10pm: Scandal
Friday
8pm: Whitney
Sunday
9pm: Good Wife, Revenge
10pm: 666 Park Avenue???
I’ve added three new shows, which may or may not be removed after I try them out for a few weeks, but for the most part, I’m okay with that lineup. It cuts out basically all reality TV in favor of the scripted shows (which I generally think are better quality, though shows like “Hart of Dixie” and “Whitney” are not exactly high-caliber either – guilty pleasures!). It’s also a mix of comedies and dramas, which I like because I can pick what I want depending on my mood. I’m not thrilled with the total number of hours of TV (ten hours a week?! Yikes!), but perhaps I’ll cut that down as the season progresses and I pare it down further. Plus, I almost never just sit down to watch TV – these are generally things I’ll watch while I’m getting ready for work in the morning or perhaps on the treadmill/elliptical at the gym. Who says multitasking gets you nowhere? Not me!
What’s on your reading list / TV watching list?
I don’t watch TV. (I really should just cancel my cable again.) I have been trying to read more, too! I’m currently reading This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.