Alaska on my Mind

So, so ready to spend Thanksgiving with Lauren in Alaska!

Three flights stand in the way of this blissful adventure, however - Houston to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Anchorage, and Anchorage to Kenai.

Even though, normally, flying on a Wednesday would be ideal, this Wednesday just happens to be the day before the busiest travel day of the year. I'm already dreading the airport mania. I do some of my worst character judging based on things like how quickly people can remove their shoes before getting to security, who is talking just loud enough for everyone to hear about the extent of their travels (I beat you, I promise) and people wearing sunglasses inside. Airports!

To combat my inner crazies, I'm majorly stocking up on reading material. I also envision my six days in Alaska looking a lot like this:

Wake up
Make hot tea
Read
Go for a FREEZING walk
Make hot chocolate
Read
Watch a chick flick
Drink wine
Go for another FREEZING walk, this time tipsy
Eat dinner
Drink wine
Read/Watch another movie

(This looks strangely similar to my beach vacation schedule, only with sweaty walks instead of freezing.)

Clearly, my Kindle is going to be busting at the seams. I really, really, really love my Kindle.

Books to be read include but are not limited to...



Even among authors, Jeffrey Eugenides possesses a rare talent for being able to inhabit his characters. In The Marriage Plot, his third novel and first in ten years (following the Pulitzer Prize-winning Middlesex), Eugenides describes a year or so in the lives of three college seniors at Brown in the early 80s. There is Madeleine, a self-described “incurable romantic” who is slightly embarrassed at being so normal. There is Leonard, a brilliant, temperamental student from the Pacific Northwest. And completing the triangle is Mitchell, a Religious Studies major from Eugenides’ own Detroit. What follows is a book delivered in sincere and genuine prose, tracing the end of the students’ college days and continuing into those first, tentative steps toward true adulthood. This is a thoughtful and at times disarming novel about life, love, and discovery, set during a time when so much of life seems filled with deep portent.



Andre Agassi had his life mapped out for him before he left the crib. Groomed to be a tennis champion by his moody and demanding father, by the age of twenty-two Agassi had won the first of his eight grand slams and achieved wealth, celebrity, and the game’s highest honors. But as he reveals in this searching autobiography, off the court he was often unhappy and confused, unfulfilled by his great achievements in a sport he had come to resent. Agassi writes candidly about his early success and his uncomfortable relationship with fame, his marriage to Brooke Shields, his growing interest in philanthropy, and—described in haunting, point-by-point detail—the highs and lows of his celebrated career.

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles—micro-robots—has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.
It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.
Every attempt to destroy it has failed.
And we are the prey.
(((I love Michael Crichton's books and I don't care what you think!)))

Dr. Andrew Weil has proven that the best way to maintain optimum physical health is to draw on both conventional and alternative medicine. Now, in Spontaneous Happiness, he gives us the foundation for attaining and sustaining optimum emotional health. Rooted in Dr. Weil's pioneering work in integrative medicine, the book suggests a reinterpretation of the notion of happiness, discusses the limitations of the biomedical model in treating depression, and elaborates on the inseparability of body and mind.

Dr. Andrew Weil is kind of the dark horse - I usually associate him with mushrooms (non-hallucinogenic, for the record) for some reason.