- 27 -

Joe got me this mug for my birthday--a bit of our favorite local business to keep at home, & a bit of rainbow optimism to keep my tip-tap-typing on my work.

I am entering my 27th year. This is meant to be a big one--big ambitions for my personal & professional year. I'm attempting to organize my first AAG paper session. I'm editing my first articles that I hope to have published. Research agendas are set. A calendar of deadlines--grants, papers, projects, abstracts--hangs on my home office wall. I'm attempting to thin my obligations & create time for my life outside of work. 

As a toast to that ambition, I'm trying to reclaim my blogging. It's a small step back to the type of writing I've most enjoyed doing, creative nonfiction. While I won't clutter this blog with personal tid-bits, I would like to begin posting collections of the Internet & life that seem to be most refreshing. Here's such a post, or "A List As I Turn 27".

• Local writer Scott Russell Sanders has written a play, The Birthday Feast. It will be both my first time to a Cardinal Stage Company production & a great chance to conduct some unconventional participant observation. The Bloomington Community Orchard is partnering with Cardinal Stage Company to promote the play & the planting of fruit trees.
• I love to write, & I love to read. Growing up, this meant Rory Gilmore felt like a kindred spirit. I like this list: 5 of Rory's favorite books that perfectly explain Gilmore Girls. Anna Karenina and The Year of Magical Thinking make my own list of favorites.
• Buzzfeed explains post-structuralism with hipster beards. And it works. Here are parts one & two.
• For my birthday, I'm giving myself an incredible gift. Time for my favorite activity: cooking. I'll be whipping up pumpkin pasta, a butternut squash tart, & pumpkin cinnamon rolls.
• Finally, I'm really missing chances to speak French these days. I made an intense list of French films in my Netflix queue, & I found these two articles. First, these tips on things to learn from the French will make you a calmer person. Second, these 10 idioms are all hilariously beautiful things. I am letting everyone know that I don't ask them about their grandmother's bike riding habits.