notes to myself #2:

The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don’t know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage. Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.

If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.

---- Vincent Van Gogh

lumos maxima and hufflepuffs galore

I first read Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (and it's companion, Qudditich Through The Ages) when I was 8 years old. That's fifteen years since Newton Scamander came into my life. So why does the nine month wait until November seem so agonisingly long? Luckily I have this terribly short teaser trailer to tide me over (and over and over and over).

I know Fantastic Beasts isn't a Hogwarts-centred film but I'm particularly happy that we're moving away from the Gryffindor bias and finally getting a Hufflepuff point of view. Perhaps more people will start to identify with Hufflepuff house and the brilliant witches and wizards it produced-- Newt Scamander, Nymphandora Tonks, Cedric Diggory, Teddy Lupin, etc. My opinion on Hufflepuff house was probably best explained by Rowling's own daughter: 'I think we should all want to be Hufflepuffs.'

Now, excuse me while I continue my fangirling.

reading in twenty-sixteen:

Simple fact, I love reading.

It's something that I've always enjoyed. Sure, as a child I also entertained sports and art but reading is what I felt most happy doing. If I was in a car and not driving, I would have a book in hand-- oblivious to whatever top 40 was playing. I went to midnight releases and analysed books in between classes with my best friend. To this day you would be hard-pressed to find me without a book in my bag and I check out more books than my local library is comfortable with (I'm not even sorry). The thing is that sometimes my good intentions are simply that. Due dates fly by and I'm not more than 100 pages in. I take note of the book, mentally promising that I'll be back to finish it as I place it into the book drop-- but that tends to not always work out. So this year for my reading challenge, I'm coming back for those books. I'll also probably be dabbling a bit in book'd out's reading challenge for variety's sake.

The magic number this year? 24, or 2 books a month. Here's the list so far:

January

• (15) Stardust, Neil Gaiman
• (28) My Little French Kitchen, Rachel Khoo*

February

• (21) Spark Joy, Marie Kondō
• (24) Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman

March

• (02) Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell
• (13) Cinder, Marissa Meyer
• (19) The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman
• (30) Uprooted, Naomi Novik

April

• ??

* = Normally I don't count cookbooks, but I actually made 3-5 things from this!

the realities of being a casual worker in retail

tl;dr: Sometimes you have 40+ hour work weeks, other days you end up smothered in popcorn and books.

Once upon a time I had a job that required me to work the typical 40 hours-5 days a week deal. As a highly left-brained person, the structure and order that schedule provided simply delighted me. It was easy as I knew when and which days I was free, how early I needed to be up (4 AM), and when I needed to be asleep (8-9 PM). I fell absolutely in love with that job and never wanted to leave. Of course, all good things must come to an end (for one reason or another). These days, I'm employed casually-- which used to be an issue for a weird-workaholic like me. I like to be busy-- to feel as though I have a purpose and to feel tired at the end of my day and yet, I'm loving casual employment. Instead of alarm clocks and half-remembered morning showers, I can wake up at 5 AM and not make any efforts to get out of bed until two hours later. I can have hot sauce covered popcorn for lunch and read for hours then follow it up with countless more hours of writing. For the first time in a while, I'm feeling efficient creatively. That's not to say I'm particularly good at any of this right brain madness-- writing, painting, cooking, but to create things with my own two hands is so fulfilling. So while I may frequently find myself at a loss without constant work, the reality is now I have the time to figure it out.

notes to myself #1:

"Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again." ---- Og Mandino

imagine my shock when i ordered pancakes for the first time in europe.

There's nothing a pancake stack can't fix, right? Heart-aches, headaches, alcohol induced-aches, the common cold (maybe that last one is a stretch) so I thought it might be just the trick to fix a sudden bout of winter-induced homesickness. It was baltic levels of freezing when my half frozen limbs and I ducked into a place that looked like it might serve breakfast. I'd just finished up my first 9 AM Introduction to Archaeology class which I was hilariously late for... (a week late to be exact, but that's another story for another time) and these pancakes were the only thing on my mind for a good two hours.

Imagine my shock.

No, go ahead... do it. Imagine my shock when my so-called pancake stack arrived. What arrived was a sad lifeless display. They were flat, tough, horrifying caricatures of pancakes. They were crepes.

So no, I didn't end up with the wondrously tall and fluffy, perfectly golden stack of pancakes I was craving (adjective overload alert) but I did end up with a lesson learned. Always make your own pancakes. Here's the gist of my sad sad lesson:

250 ml milk
125 g plain flour
1 medium egg
1.5 tbs of granulated sugar
a pinch of salt
1.5 tbs of butter, softened
4 teaspoons baking powder

And please, for goodness sake don't eat them until they're all in the oven, warmed up. I promise, the stack is worth it.

emotional trauma at the hands of a paperback

When I move, I don't tend to take books with me. They're heavy, I own a kindle and I frequent libraries, but one story I can't live without is Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. I obtain it in every country: second-hand, fresh from the book store or from a friend. Today I opened my copy to skim through and this caught my eye: “My arms are killing me. I didn't know words could be so heavy."

This book just gets me.

hello, is this thing on?

Since I was a child, I've had this weird yet comforting relationship with the moon. Not so incredibly weird where I grew disillusioned and decided to talk to it (but really I should say her, shouldn't I?) but the fascination has always been there. I buried myself in books and stories about Artemis, Hecate, Luna, Selene and lunar deities all around the world. My fascination drank every word I could find on moon phases, cycles and eclipses. From the wolf moon to the cold moon, I was utterly enchanted-- a goner from the day my mother told my about la luna and the deal sealed by Endymion himself. I do not look to the moon for imaginary guidance (however much I wish that actually worked) but as purely childlike optimism and comfort and though I know myself to be reckless and fickle, one thing that I do not leave and that does not leave me, is the moon.

(unless you know, there's a lunar eclipse. but we're not being that pedantic, alright?)