Well Planned Life

Source I’ve never been a fan of horror fiction, Stephen King type books.   I’m not even one for horror flicks really.   The blood and guts and gore never did anything for me.   To me, it all looks fake, so it doesn’t appeal to me. Stories with a spooky feel, now that’s more of what interests me, storylines with a vibe of something happening, though we’re not really sure what exactly.   Those are more real to me, and therefore are the “scary” stories that draw my attention. One of my favorite authors of late is Jennifer McMahon .   I won’t lie—I was initially drawn to her books because of the covers .   (In fact, that’s how I usually choose books, which is probably not the best form of filtering for a librarian, but I have to start somewhere, and since I’m a visual person, that tends to be it.)   The covers for McMahon’s books (so far) are pictures of young girls, all who look like they might harbor some sort of secret to another world. ...

There has been much talk about Gillio Firenze planners lately.   Many people have purchased them and written blogs posts about them; they have been featured in Philofaxy posts ; there’s a dedicated Facebook group for them.   Their planners are beautiful, but they have a price tag to match (though well worth every penny, from what I’m hearing).   It’s like an exclusive club, the way people are talking about them—I’m not all too familiar with the company or the planner names; I don’t have a new bag to compare my new Gillio planner to; I don’t own a binder whose leather is so soft and supple, like butter. I’m jealous. There, I said it.   Sigh. Yes, I’m jealous. All of the buzz I’m hearing—the excitement over a new planner, and not just a new planner, but a gorgeous one at that, one that compares to nothing like I’ve ever seen before.   Or so I’m hearing. I’ve perused the website.   I like what I see.   I especially like that there’s...

It has taken me a long time ( life events and various stressors disrupted my mojo), but I have finally reached my first goal in my health journey.   You may remember that the goal was to lose just over 9 pounds .   In total, I have lost 11.   This is not great for three months (I would rather have lost a little more in that time), but it’s sure better than where I was, especially considering the circumstances—and it’s an achievement in general, so I’m just happy to be moving in the right direction. The reward I set for achieving my first goal was to buy one piece of clothing each from Athleta and Title Nine .   I love the clothes from each company, but more so, I love the lifestyle they each represent—health and activity and fun!   I find their clothing to be a little more expensive than I would usual spend, but in this case, I’m allowing myself to make a purchase.   With Christmas coming up and birthdays and anniversaries galore this month, I may ...

One of my organization projects for this year was to clean out our main coat closet.   This is a particularly hard place to organize because it lives under our stairs.   But because it can hold a lot, we put a lot in it.   The problem was, to get to anything from the back, one had to move everything in the front.   And that’s just no good. This is what we started out with: The front part of the closet is for coats and hats and gloves and scarves and random shoes (generally I keep my shoes in my bedroom closet, but there are a few that live here, specifically the ones I can put on quickly to run out and get the mail). Once inside the closet, we turn left, and we have this mess: See, quite the catchall.   We also had two tables inside which actually helped create a bit of vertical storage.   But in the end, it was just too difficult to use them—pulling items out from underneath the tables was not easy. The first thing I did was cl...