It's been exactly two weeks since I'm back here and I already made a sheet-like calender to cross off the days until Easter. I'm hoping I'll get one or two visitors around here...or maybe even more... Everybody, you are most welcome to come visit me!! Besides the money issue, there shouldn't be anything standing between you and a week or two of vacationing in Porto. Just that.

The weather has been so and so. We had rain and wind, unpleasant days, and then there are the sunny nice days, but they are still kinda cold. So I just want to stay in bed and watch movies. I guess everybody is just trying to get through these darn winter months.




I've been thinking about various things. I enjoyed these series on wardrobe changes and all that. I guess everybody's been doing it since last year. Trying to cut down on your clothes and wear just a certain number, 30, something like that. Oh, here's another proof of it, and a whole blog about it. It would be nice to do so, just try to keep only the stuff you like and really wear the heck out of them. And also makes you think about your style and clothes and what matters to you, being comfortable, being 'a fashion diva' and what not...
Just making things simple, clear, uncomplicated.



photo via Rmtl

In parallel with this closet rethinking and simplifying things in your life I've been reading this book, that talks about a new way of rethinking your time and efforts, that you can't do it all, that you have to choose what to do with your time / because otherwise others will choose for you, that you have to accept trade offs.

Another book I want to read soon enough is this one. And here's an article or two about it, if you think you're into it...
I don't know...this time spent here in school, my teachers and my colleagues, even what I'm studying: menswear have got me thinking about re analyzing everything, simplifying, organizing, planning on every level. I guess it's the way people do things here (in school).



I have a little series  /it's called High Maintenance/ I've discovered and would like to share with you. It's a bunch of 5-10 minute episodes about different people and their weed guy. It's in New York
so of course I love it. I love to watch movies and documentaries about people living in NY, so this was perfect. Hope you'll enjoy it too, if not who cares.
As you probably know, Girls is back on for a while now, and thanks to Nadia I have seen the first two episodes and I love it. I've watched them in the morning before going to school and it's just the perfect thing to help me day dream all the rest of the day in classes. I'm so glad it's on again.

I enjoyed this TED Playlist on Finding the right Job, since clearly I'm in need of help on that matter.

Until next time, I leave you with some school and bad weather pics, cause that's what I'll be experiencing in the weeks to come.

Readings

I wanted to post about this in ages. It's just that I got busy, went through different phases where I did not have the patience to read as sometimes I feel I need a calm period to really get around a book. So if I was reading, I would get bored of the book and then start another and then another, and I would be left with unfinished books, which I hate cause then they feel like homework. I get excited about finding a book and then getting it on my nook and have that feeling that I have it there to read, it's waiting for me, but when it really comes down to reading it on a daily basis I get discouraged.
I still love my nook, my precious nook.

Finished
I had finished a few months ago Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. It was fine, but a bit depressing and long and boring at times.
Also a few months ago finished, but enjoyed more than The Bell Jar was The pornographer by John McGahern. I don't know how I stumbled upon this book, but I did and it was engaging. It's about a writer who writes erotica and he meets this woman and gets her pregnant and then wants to get rid of her. At the same time his visits his grandmother in the hospital, where he meets another girl, and so on...It's good.
Just Ride, A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike by Grant Persen is exactly what it seems, just a nonfictional guide about bikes and riding them.
Finished ages ago, Fear of Flying by Erica Jong, was engaging, sad sometimes, funny most of the times.
Delta of Venus, erotic writings by Anais Nin. Some stories were short and interesting, others creepy, long, boring, so many names appear from nowhere. I would not reread this, nor recommend it.
Finished Ignore Everybody, And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod which was also interesting and maybe fun.

Started/ currently reading/ hoping to finish
I've started Alain de Botton's The Pleasures and Sorrows of work, which at first was a bit boring and too formal, but then it got OK. I still have to finish it, but I'm not loving it.
Prime of Life, Simone de Beauvoir did not finish, but it is interesting and will.
The Gift, Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde is difficult at the beginning, most of part I as he talks about gifts and gift exchange and gratitude, so I'm looking forward to the second part. It's interesting, for sure.
The beginning of Autobiography by Morrissey is a tad boring, but we'll see.

photos these week

 {weeknight trip to Carturesti}

 {leftover lunch}

 {farmers' market eggs}

 {new vase + freesia}

 {buttermilk biscuit/strawberry jam + new darling plate}

{these snacks sent from America - courtesy of Dna Maria}

what I've been reading lately

Ever since Black Friday, in November, I've been reading more thanks to this guy:

 

 {nook simple touch}

With the little money I got from my one month first serious job, I got a new phone and this reader. Before I decided on this one, I had always thought I would get the Kindle reader, you know, cause everyone had it, I used to see to everywhere. But this is better. It has the touch feature, which the cheaper version of the kindle reader I was hooked on doesn't. You have only buttons. Plus the nook has a better design. For more information you should watch a YouTube review.

Bottom line is, I am so pleased with it. 

So since I got it, I had a few books I finished:

• How to be a woman - Caitlin Moran
• Quitter... /  Start... - Jon Acuff 
• Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Books I started and am currently reading :

• Spousonomics 
• Eating animals
• The Alchemist
• 50 Shades of Grey
• The Happiness Project

I'll probably be reviewing some of them, but not very soon. Right now I have to be getting back to work for school.