Well Read?

According to this Buzzfeed quiz, I am not well read at all:

"You need to find a cozy nook and snuggle up with some more of this list. Or maybe this isn’t your kind of thing. Which is cool too."

I'd like to comment on the bad grammar ("cool too?" No comma?) or share my 2014 reading challenge with buzzfeed or show my goodreads account to prove otherwise, but instead, I've decided to create my own list of books that I think must be read for a person to claim they are "well Read."

1. Johnny Tremain
2. The Scarlet Pimpernell
3. The Great Gatsby
4. 1 book by George Orwell (not both, they're the same idea)
5. 1 book by George Steinbeck (See last comment)
6. NOT A Brave New World. If you need a good dystopian/utopian novel, I'd suggest both Anthem and The Giver.
7. Little Women
8. Pride and Prejudice
9. Great Expectations
10. Julius Cesar, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and A Mid Summer's Night Dream 
11. Oedipus Rex
12. Don Quiote
13. The Lord of the Flies
14. The Illiad and The Oddessy
15. The entire Narnia Series
16. Charlotte's Web
17. Little House on the Prarie
18. A Wrinkle in Time
19. Gone with the Wind
20. Frankenstein
21. The Hobbit
22. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
23. Something Big has Been Here
24. A Shel Silverstein Book
25. Night
26. The Diary of Anne Frank
27. The Devil's Arithmetic
28. Mick Harte was Here
29. Number the Stars
30. The Outsiders
31. The Harry Potter Series
32. The Face on the Milk Carton
33. The Book Thief
34. The Fault In Our Stars
35. The Hunger Games series
36. Three Cups of Tea
37. The Last Lecture (And watch the video!)
38. The Help
39. Les Miserables
40. The Secret Garden
41. The Little Princess
42. Where the Red Fern Grows
43. Old Yeller
44. Matilda
45. Cheaper by the Dozen
46. Harriet the Spy
47. The Indian in the Cupboard 
48. The Hatchet

Some of these books I did not love, but I think they are considered great works and you must read so you're capable of catching the references and joining the discussion. Also, some of these are not classics. I know. I still think they are good books that everyone should read.

I can't believe half of these books aren't on the buzzfeed list!

My children WILL read these books, even if they're not assigned in school.

My Chicago Bucket List

I created a Chicago Bucket List when I first moved here, a year and a half ago. It's time for an update!

  Here's what I've already accomplished:

• The Eternal Flame on Clark St
• Chicago History Museum
• Tribune Tower (the tower's signature is the exterior collection of stones from other famous edifices, like the Parthenon, St. Peter's Basilica, Notre Dame, the White House and most recently, the Berlin Wall). I also found a stone from The Alamo!
• Shedd Aquarium (Twice!)
• Museum of Science and Industry
• Millennium Park (Crown Fountain and The Bean!)
• The Field Museum
• Magnificent Mile
• Chicago History Museum
• I've eaten Portillo's, and had Garret's Popcorn, Ann Sathers Cinnamon Rolls, Lou Malnati's and Giordano's pizzas
• Taste of Chicago (SO GOOD!)
•  A Cubs game and a White Sox game
• The Lincoln Park Zoo and Zoo Lights
• The Ferris Wheel and Stained Glass Museum at Navy Pier
• Art Institute of Chicago (Happy dance!)
• Comedy Shows
• The 95th Lounge at the top of the Hancock
• The Book of Mormon on Broadway
• I've seen several Story Slams (They're a TON of fun)
• St Pat's Day is Chi/ the River dyed green
• Run the Ragnar Relay and the Color Run
• Been on Multiple Trolley Tours
• Oktoberfest
• Visited Ohio
• A Chicago Fire (Soccer) Game
• Chicago Botanical Garden
• United Center for a Bulls Game
• The Museum of Contemporary Art
• Adler Planetarium
• The Jane Addams Hull House Museum (RMP What What!)

Here's what I still have left to accomplish:

• Tour of Wrigley Field
• The Blue Man Group show
• Legoland Discovery Center
•  LUMA
• Skydeck Chicago
• Chicago Children's Museu
• Chicago Opera Theater (I would die to see The Magic Flute!)
• Joffrey Ballet of Chicago (Maybe the Nutcracker again? I'll never tire of it)
• Willie Dixon's Blue's Heaven Foundation
• The Balzekas Museum of Lithuanuan Culture (It's supposed to have a good exhibit on the Holocaust)
• Trump Towers (Maybe visit the Spa as a splurge?)
• Winter Skating either at Bicentennial Park or  the McCormick Tribune Plaza
• The National Veterans Art Museum
• Museum of Holography
• Galos Caves (15 dollars for a 45 minute Zero Gravity Chair massage and sea salt smelling? Count me in!)
• The International Museum of Surgical Science
• The American Police Museum
• The God Bless America Statue
• The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (Apparently a really good way to learn about Commodities)
• Museum of Broadcast Communications
• National Hellenic Museum
• The Picasso Statue
• The All Saints Episcopal Church
• Buddy Guy's Legends (Blues House restaurant)
• Busy Beaver Button Co. Museum
• Cambodian American Heritage Museum
• Chagall's Four Seasons
• The start of Route 66
• Chicago Hot Glass (Hand Blown Glass Studio that offers lessons)
• Chicago Center for Green Technology
• Chinatown and the Chinatown Gate
• Crawford Steel Graffiti Wall
• DANK HAUS German Cultural Center

And I'm open to any suggestions anyone else has. Who wants to work on this with me?

2014: The Year of Reading

Last year, I made my first "goal." I don't like resolutions... goals are more of something to aim for and easier to achieve if you make them SMART. Last year, I aimed to do one big act of kindness per week, and then post in a blog about it. And I did it! It was a blast! You can see the awesome, fun things I did here: www.KTandTheKindnessProject.wordpress.com.

Last year, one of my very dearest friends managed to read 104 books. We are voracious readers as a group but I only managed to read a third of what she read! This year, my goal is to read 52 books: one for each week of the year. I'm using this post as a way to mark my progress.

1/1 - 1/7 Sickened: The True Story of a Lost Childhood by Julia Greggory

1/8 -1/14 Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

1/15 - 1/21 Bel Canto by Ann Patchet

1/22 - 1/28 The Alphabet Sisters by Monica McInerney I loved this book until they killed off a main character for no reason.

1/ 29 - 2/4 The First Counsel by Brad Meltzer (I got it for like 2 bucks on sale at Barnes and Noble. Brad Meltzer is a wannabe Dan Brown. It's a good mystery but no where near on the level that Dan Brown is.)

2/5 - 2/11 The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life by James J. Martin, SJ (This book took me AGES to finish but it was well worth my time!)

2/12 - 2/18 S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst

2/19 - 2/25 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Much shorter than I thought it was!)
This is the point that I officially fell behind... but in all fairness, I read 33 magazines in the first 8 weeks of this year. Catching up soon!

2/26 - 3/4 Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (Caught up here. Also, I've come to the conclusion that I don't like Alice at all. She's a complete idiot.)

3/5 - 3/11 The 9/11 Commission Report - This was SO heavy and yet so worth it. I understand so much more about terrorism, UBL, Islam, politics in the decades leading up to 9/11, etc. I definitely recommend this one! It tool me 3 weeks to read this one so I fell behind again.

3/12 - 3/18 The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty (I read this one in 3 days)

3/19 - 3/25 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (This one is a non fiction but it reads like a fiction. Very interesting and worth the read).

3/26 - 4/1 Emma by Jane Austen (Typical Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice is still the best.)

4/2 -  4/8 Wild at Heart By John Eldridge (I agree with the basic premise of this book, but disagreed about SO much of it. Homosexuality isn't caused by men who weren't loved enough by their fathers)

4/9 - 4/15 Wild by Cheryl Strayed (I think this is my favorite book that I've read so far this year. Well worth the read!)

4/16 - 4/22 Fifty Shades Darker by EL James (Yup, every now and again, smut is read)

4/23 - 4/29 Fifty Shades Free  by EL James (No comment.)

4/30 - 5/6 The Night Circus  by Erin Morgensten (I couldn't put this down. It was so wonderfully written, the characters were so lovable, the passion was muted, and it was such a slow build. 5 stars!)

5/7 - 5/13 Glitter and Glue By Kelly Corrigan (I expected this to be a fun memoir about what she learned while nannying. It was really a really long essay about how she loved her mother despite the fact that she doesn't like her mother. Whomp Whomp.)

5/14 - 5/20 Ok so I'm officially way behind. Doubting that I'll get one book a week but I will have read at least 3 magazines per week for the entire year! This week's book: Someone has to Set a Bad Example: An Anne Taintor Collection It was quite entertaining and silly and quick.

5/21 - 5/27 Hearts of Fire: Eight Women in the Underground Church and Their Stories of Costly Faith  My mother recommended this one. it was a quick read and inspiring, although not life changing.

*Side note: I read another 46 magazines at this point. Stay tuned.

5/28 - 6/3 Notes from the Underwire By Quinn Cummings (This was a quick read and it made me smile, but it was not on the level of Erma Bombeck as the cover suggested it was)
 
6/4 - 6/10 The Trouble with Magic by Patricia Rice (more smut. But enjoyable)

6/11 - 6/17 Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, SJ (I do love reading more about Jesuits and their work. Homeboy Industries is an awesome project that is changing the world, one gangster at a time. I'd definitely recommend this book!)

6/18 - 6/24 Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire (The sequel to Wicked. Wish I had read this immediately after reading the first. I think it would have made more sense then. Still good)

6/25 - 7/1 Dear Mrs. Kennedy: The World Shares its Grief, Letters November 1963 by Jay Mulvaney and Paul De Angelis (I really enjoyed this; it opened my eyes up to the time period better than anything else I've read. I particularly loved the letters LBJ wrote to Caroline and John Jr.).

7/2 - 7/8 Milkrun by Sarah Mlynowski (Cute, chick lit, nothing super fancy)

7/9 - 7/15 An Old Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott (I think LMA is quite possibly my favorite author ever)

7/16 - 7/22 Daring Greatly By Brene Brown (EVERYONE should read this book! It changed me so much!)

7/23 - 7/29 The Curius Incident of the Dog at Night by Mark Haddon (I liked the writing style and that it's told from the point of view of a young man with Aspergers but it ended a little too abruptly)

*I read another 21 magazines, bringing the magazine total up to 100.

7/30 - 8/5 Love, Sex, and Other Natural Disasters: Relationship Reporting from America's Finest News Source by The Onion (Hilarious!)

8/6 - 8/12 The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama (It took me 4 times to pick up and read this book, despite the fact that Obama is such a great speaker and the fact that I agree with a lot of his politics. It can't be read in short little bits here and there. It needs a large amount of time to make sense. Still a good book)

8/13 - 8/19 Yes, Please by Amy Poehler (this book makes it into one of my top books for the year. She is so profound in addition to being funny!)

8/20 - 8/26 Every Day by David Levithan (I didn't expect to like this one but picked it up at a friend's insistence and ended up reading it in one sitting. Well worth it!)

*I read another 34 magazines, bringing the magazine total up to 134.

8/27 - 9/2Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (I liked this one better than The Husband's Secret)

9/3 - 9/9 The Artemis Fowl Files by Eoin Colfer (I love this series, despite it being a childrens' series)

9/10 - 9/16 A Charmed Life: Growing up in Macbeth's Castle by Liza Campbell (This memoir made me sad. She was never loved the way children should be!)

9/17 - 9/23

9/24 - 9/30

10/1 - 10/7

10/8 - 10/14

10/15 - 10/21

10/22 - 10/28

10/ 29 - 11/4

11/5 - 11/11


11/12 - 11/18

11/19 - 11/25

11/26 - 12/2

12/3 - 12/9

12/10 - 12/16

12/17 - 12/23

12/24 - 12/31

Welcome to the Gunshow

In the past few months, the topic of gun control has been getting people around the country fired up. There are groups of people boycotting other groups of people, all sorts of legislation being proposed and shot down, and all sorts of media on the topic.

I was born and bred in Texas, but I have Yankee parents. It was a huge shock to me when I hit high school and realized 95% of my friends were part of households that owned guns. My parents do not and never have owned firearms. Nor do they plan on owning guns in the future. I've been to ranges before and had a ton of fun shooting! I'm not anti-gun, but I'm not pro-gun either. I'm pro-discussion. America has a problem with gun violence and it's time we took a serious look at our country and stop ignoring the problem. And as always, I don't think you should participate in the discussion unless you know the facts.

Here's some things you should know before you start spouting your beliefs:

• This isn't a democrats vs republicans thing. All over the country, you will find people from both ends of the political spectrum on both sides of the issue. Some high-profile examples of this are Gabby Giffords, former Republican Representative, who is calling for stricter gun laws and former Democratic Representative Joe Baca who is very supportive of the NRA. 
• There are examples in other countries/cultures of gun control working and examples in other countries/cultures of gun control failing. It's not a worthy argument to bring those up in defense of your side. NONE of those cultures are the same as America's culture. And there's plenty of examples showing opposite results. We won't know if gun control works in this culture unless we decide to try it.
• The ad the NRA put out attacking Obama for having gun-carrying agents protect his daughters is completely illogical. When we don't protect the First Family, we open ourselves up to terrible things happening (Terrorism is alive and well in the world). Before he was president, those girls did not have that protection (despite living in Chicago, the city with probably the most gun violence in America right now). EVERY president (Republican and Democrat) has the same protection.
• The second amendment (the right to bear arms) was adopted in  the 16th century, when technology was much different. Back then, guns weren't capable of firing as quickly as they are now. Colonists could probably fire a shot a minute. The second amendment also talks about why Americans should have the right to bear arms: to keep a well regulated militia. We have one of the best military in the world, so when people try to invoke the second amendment as a way of justifying civilian gun ownership, they're missing the point.
• If you're focusing just on mass shootings, you're also missing that gun violence occurs everyday in America. When the Sandy Hook shooting happened, it was a wake up call just by numbers alone, but you can't forget homicides, etc.
• There was an off-duty marine in the Aurora theater when that shooting happened. She did not have her gun on her but she said she wouldn't have shot anyway. She could have been mistaken as a second shooter or missed and created more victims in the chaos. Please don't say that having more citizens carry guns would eliminate mass shootings. You can find her story in the February 2013 issue of Glamor.
• There's several different pieces of federal legislation being debated right now. There is discussion on requiring a background check on all gun transactions. There's discussion on limiting magazine capacity for civilians. There's discussion on punishment for crimes involving guns.
• The United States has more guns per capita than any other country in the world (Time Magazine's January 28, 2013 issue has a lot of good information on this). Also, gun crimes have decreased in the US pretty steadily in the past 10 years.

Regardless of how you feel about guns, now is the time to have a discussion on it! Do your research, and then find legislation you want to support or kill (pun intended). But please don't go in without doing your research!

New Years vs Lent

Breaking bad habits is for New Years. Lent, however, is so much more. Lent is about spiritual growth.

Yes, giving up something is supposed to imitate Jesus fasting in the dessert for 40 days all while resisting temptation. But do you know what Jesus was doing while fasting? Check out Luke 4 or Matthew 4 for a moment.

Jesus had just been baptized. The Holy Spirit led him into the desert to fast. While he was there, he was praying. He was preparing for the work he had been given by his Heavenly Father. He was using the time to grow closer to God. He was fasting for clarity of mind and spirit. He wasn't alone in the wilderness, either. He was filled with the Holy Spirit. And after he resisted temptation, angels came and ministered to him. Moses and Elijah also both fasted for 40 days in preparation for great works for God (Exodus 24:18 and 1 Kings 19:8). They spent the time in prayer.

The idea of fasting or giving up a vice is about breaking attachments to material things and turning your focus instead towards God. This lenten season, think about what you're doing to grow closer to God, not what you're giving up. Instead of giving up, you could also think about taking something on.

I'm not saying your plan to give up chocolate/soda/fillintheblank is bad. What I am saying is that each time you are tempted to go back to that material thing, take a moment to pray or to read your Bible.  Faith needs to be tested to grow strong. My faith was tested when my brother died, but now I understand my faith better. Take a moment to think about how God provided for Jesus when he resisted temptation and remember that God will provide for all of your needs. When you are tempted, answer temptation with God's Word. Don't just rely on your own strength, rely on God to help you past the temptation.We need to know Scripture well enough to answer our doubts and fears and temptations with it. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17).

This year for lent, I'm doing a daily devotional in an effort to spend more time immersed in the Word of God.

KT's Salsa

This recipe was created by me by sifting through lots of other people's recipes. It is a mild (but DELICIOUS) salsa. If you like a hotter version, add more chilli powder or a diced jalapeno.

Ingredients:

• 7 tomatoes, diced
• 3 bell peppers (I use one orange, one yellow, and one green), diced
• 1/2 of a large yellow onion, diced
• 2 T salt
• 2 T cumin
• 2 T chilli powder
• 1/4 C fresh cilantro, diced
• 1 T freshly minced garlic
• 1/2 C of vinegar

Simply mix the ingredients in a bowl and refrigerate for a sweet, chunky salsa. If you prefer to have a smoother salsa, puree or blend instead of dicing.

Snapshot

The SFA Alumni Association regularly does a snapshot of some Faculty or Staff member's office and then they get to tell you about their office. It ends up really capturing the essence of that person. Here's what you'll find in my office at any given point:

• At least one mug and one cup- I'm always drinking either hot tea or water
• At least 3 pairs of shoes- a pair of sandals for any work I'm doing in/on/around the pool, a pair of tennis shoes in case I need to do some heavy lifting/moving/handyman work, and a pair of dress(y) shoes
• An extra phone charger- it took my parents almost 12 hours to get a hold of me after they found out my brother had died. It's one of the few small grief things I have, but I MUST have my phone on and with me at all times. Serious nerves happen if I don't.
• Snackage- This girl loves to eat! Currently, my snack drawer contains Red Bull, Velveeta Instant Mac, and Trader Joe's nuts
• Tea- I have a stash of loose and bagged tea. If you need some, just drop by! Tea is my happy place. It calms me when I'm most stressed.
• Swim Suit / towel / goggles- Life Aquatics. 'Nough Said.
• Pictures- I have a trio right now: One of my parents, one of my sister, and one of my brother
• Name Tags- I have my name tag from every conference I've been to since my Sophomore year of college hanging together. It's something a few of my mentors did. I can look at the name tags and be reminded of past fun and of how far I've come since that first NIRSA conference I went to.

I'm noticing a theme. Apparently my life revolves around food, family, and fitness.

Also, check out this article about your office: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/what-your-desk-says-about-you-001043491.html I have an organized desk and uncommon objects.