I was going to take today to round up all the book reviews I promised over a month ago but I forgot to bring my list with me to work and I'm going to be watching a toddler this evening so I'll postpone that post until next week.
Speaking of books though, a friend recently told me about the Children's Book and Media Review which is an organization run through BYU's library. The CBMR is working to create a library of reviews of children's literature and media that parents, teachers, librarians, etc can then reference in selecting appropriate materials for their charges and they're looking for reviewers. Guys, I'm seriously so stoked about this. So how it works is you sign up to be a reviewer then they email you a list of items that they need reviewed [mine was 5 long but I'm not sure if that's standard] from which they ask you to choose at least 2. You have to submit at least 4 reviews total in a year [the other two can come from the list they provide or you can choose your own age-appropriate materials to review]. And they're super official about this. When they email you the list to choose from they also provide a pdf that details the structure and guidelines to use in writing your reviews. This is a legit project. They mail you whichever materials you selected and the books at least come with their own bookmark that has the date they need that particular review to be submitted by. And if this whole thing hasn't gotten you excited yet, when you submit the 4 required reviews they will send you two books of your choice for free. TO KEEP. I know! I just got my two books in the mail this week and I'm really excited to read them. I'll let you guys know when I've submitted my reviews so you can go over to their site and check them out. Now go sign up!!
With LDS General Conference this last weekend I decided to make some goals for myself since I've been feeling pretty bleh lately. I've never been good at setting or really keeping goals in general as my motivation seems to have a fairly short shelf-life for things that feel like assignments but I've managed to stick with my new vitamin routine for a while now so I thought I could try to spread some of that self-discipline around.
I didn't want to do anything too big but I also wanted to encourage myself to grow and learn a little so for starters I'm dabbling in ASL. I found this site called ASL University that's been set up by a professor who teaches ASL and has made recordings of his lessons public for whoever wants to use them. The ones I've watched so far have been around half an hour in length and they're actually really fun to watch as Dr. Bill is pretty entertaining. I can't really say what drew my attention to ASL but the idea of learning has been on my back-burner for a while now and learning on my own seems a bit more attainable than learning a spoken language outside of a classroom setting. There have actually been two guys on my bus home this week that I've seen conversing in ASL and I've been really tempted to say hello but I can only recognize like three phrases right now, haha. I'm also consumed by a desire to be able to sign Blank Space because one of the phrases I've learned is "nice to meet you" and every time I see it I start singing that song in my head.
As a bit of a kick in my own behind I've also set a concrete goal for how much writing I do in a week. I'm going back to my method of setting a timer, at least for present, to keep myself to it so fingers crossed that goes well. I had planned, last year, to have the entire first draft of this monster done but the end of summer 2015 and that obviously fell apart on me so here's to hoping for better-late-than-never headway!
Since my plans to take a watercolor class this semester didn't pan out I'm also planning on doing some independent learning on that front. We live in the age of the internet, there's plenty a person can learn outside of a classroom, right? I'm wishing I had a picture of a small piece I did over the weekend to show you because I'm actually rather happy with it, though I'm pretty sure I'm mostly treating the paints like acrylic right now. Alas, you'll have to be satisfied with the "dust bunnies" I was playing with:
My brother pointed out that they look like the dust sprites from the Miyazaki films which was not necessarily my intent but I'll take it as a compliment. Those things are adorable. I feel like I ought to do something with this card for Halloween. Ideas?
So suck it, New Year's Resolutions. By the time you come around I'll already have three months of work under my belt ready to carry me into a new year [hopefully!].
No comments:
Post a Comment