Romp to Stomp Out Breast Cancer, 2010!

Some of you may remember that last year, I went to Colorado for a weekend to participate in the Romp to Stomp Out Breast Cancer, which is a snowshoe event that raises money for Susan G. Komen For the Cure. Since its inception in 2003, this event series has raised nearly one million dollars! This year, the Romp to Stomp Out Breast Cancer is coming to Washington, and I've gotten together a team to participate!

I'm sure you know that cancer is something that affects nearly every one of us. A friend of mine lost her battle with a rare form of cancer in September of 2008; she was only 25. Shawn's father lost his battle against cancer in March of 2005. My grandmother lost her battle with breast cancer when my mom was only 27. Fortunately, I also know lots of people who have fought cancer and won. My father defeated cancer when I was a very young child, and he has dealt with skin cancer recently as well. I have friends, family, and family of friends who have faced breast cancer and beaten it. As pessimistic as this may sound, I believe that if you have not yet been personally touched in some way by cancer, it's not a matter of "if" this may happen...it's a matter of when.

Those of us who are healthy have two main things we can do in the fight against cancer: we can raise awareness, and we can raise funds that will go towards research and towards helping people who are battling the disease. This is what the Tubbs Romp to Stomp Out Breast Cancer accomplishes. On February 20, 2010, I will be participating in the event on Snoqualmie Peak, in Washington, along with a group of awesome friends. I'm excited to get out into the snow of the Cascade Mountains and to raise awareness for this great cause. I'm also excited to raise funds that will go to help women in Washington get the support they need to fight breast cancer, and I'm excited to raise funds that will help continue important breast cancer research.

And that's where you come in. If you would like to donate to this cause, please click the link to be taken to my fundraising page. Every little bit helps! If you are in the Seattle/Western Washington area and are interested in joining us, there's actually a link on my fundraising page to join our team.

Thank you very much in advance!

Book Summary and Goals

Now that I've caught up on all the reviews from the books I read in 2009, I thought I'd give a little summary.

I didn't really set any specific reading goals for myself in 2009, although I knew I wanted to do more reading. I did, however, want to keep track of the number of books that I read, so you probably saw that I kept track of my stats at the end of each blog post that reviewed a book. I finished the year having read 44 books (I'm counting that last one, even though I technically didn't finish it until January 1st). After reading The Stand as my third book in 2009, I decided I should also keep track of the number of pages I read, since there's a pretty big difference between reading a book that's 180 pages and one that's over 1200 pages! I finished the year having read 15,668 pages! That gives me an average of 356 pages per book. (Granted, every book has different sized pages and different font sizes...but I'm willing to ignore that for the sake of my sanity.)

I do keep track of all of my books on Goodreads, where I can give books up to 5 stars. I realized that I only gave 5 star ratings to four books this year: The Stand by Stephen King, and Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, and Voyager by Diana Gabaldon (the first three books in the Outlander series). Those were also by far the longest books I read this year. I wonder if that says something about the books I like...

My least favorite book this year was On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It's the only book I gave a one-star rating. I noticed that I gave out lots of 3 star ratings...which is a little disappointing. Of the books I gave 4 stars, my favorites were Moloka'i by Alan Brennert, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

I've been thinking about setting some reading goals for 2010. I want to set a goal of 48 books for the year (4 books a month sounds doable to me), but I do need to remember that I won't have nearly as much down-time this year (since I'll be working full-time all year...no more "stay at home wife" time for me!). So...we'll see what happens.

I've also been trying to come up with a list of books that I'd really like to read this year. I have my "to read" list on Goodreads, and I do already have 140 books on there! So within the next week or so, I think I'll go through and prioritize that list. Right now, a book goes to the top of the list whenever I add it. I know that I want to re-read Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but I might try to do that closer to the end of the year (since The Hobbit movie will be coming out next year). I also definitely want to read more of the classics that I have somehow missed over the years...like Middlemarch by George Eliot, The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

If you have any book recommendations for me, please feel free to leave a comment!

Twenties Girl

Twenties Girl, by Sophie Kinsella, 2009 (435 pages)

I generally enjoy Sophie Kinsella's books. I really didn't know anything about this one before I got it from the library (other than the fact that it was her new book that came out this summer). I certainly wasn't expecting it to be a ghost story!

Towards the beginning of the book, Lara Lington goes with her family to the funeral of her great-aunt Sadie, who she had never met before. Sadie had lived to the age of 105, but she'd spent the last 20+ years of her life in a nursing home, where she almost never had visitors. However, at the funeral, Lara discovers that she can hear and see the ghost of Sadie (as a girl in her mid-20's). Sadie is frantic about her necklace, which she insists that someone has taken, and she begs Lara to stop the funeral and help her find it.

The book is quite entertaining, even though it certainly fits into the "chick lit/fluff" category. There were a few places in the book where the character of Lara irritated me, but if I'm being honest, that's probably because she reminded me of a younger, more immature version of myself. :-)

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Total number of books read in 2009: 44

Total number of pages read in 2009: 15668

Recap of 2009

Thinking back over the last year, Shawn and I have realized that 2009 was a huge year for us!! We've been truly blessed in so many ways! I thought I'd do a quick month-by-month recap of some of the things that happened in our lives.

January: I read my first Stephen King book, The Stand. We wrecked Shawn's car and became a one-car family.

February: Pretty low-key month for us. Shawn played some rugby. I read 8 books. I crocheted a bit. We went to a yummy restaurant and Alki Beach for Valentine's Day.

March: I went to Colorado for the Romp to Stomp Out Breast Cancer. Some of our best friends, Jarid and Sarah, came to visit us for a week. I started my long-term sub job.

April: Our church's young adults' group got started and we met some people who have become very good friends. I went to Ohio for a long weekend with my family (and was finally able to meet my soon-to-be-sister-in-law). I kept reading and subbing.

May: I was still subbing! We watched our peas sprout. We spent Memorial Day weekend in Cannon Beach, Oregon.

June: My sub job finally came to an end. We went to a fun auction where we spent way too much money (but at least it all went to a good charity, and we got awesome stuff out of it). We went to North Carolina for my brother's wedding on the beach. I drove up to Ohio with my parents to hang out for a few days. Then Shawn and I met up in St. Louis for my friend Shannon's wedding (and college girlfriends' reunion). Yep...June was busy!

July: We started the month in Denver! I got my online teaching job. We went to all 3 Cleveland Indians games at Safeco Field. We survived a heat-wave of 100+ temps with no air conditioning. We began the process of buying a home.

August: I began my new job. We had our offer on a house accepted. My parents came to visit us for a week.

September: We went to Maui for a week! (It took a couple blog posts to write about the trip.) We went snorkeling while in Hawaii. We closed on our house and became homeowners! We spent lots of time painting.

October: We moved into our house! We got settled in (with unpacking, doing yard work, more painting, steaming the carpets, etc.). My job became full-time. We joined a gym. I turned 31. We threw a housewarming/birthday(s) party.

November: Shawn turned 32. We locked ourselves out of the house. We bought a lawnmower. Shawn's family came to spend Thanksgiving with us, so we had seven people in the house for almost a week. We also had some friends over for Thanksgiving dinner, so the total for the meal was 12! We bought new chairs.

December: I did more reading. We decorated the house for Christmas. We celebrated our 2nd anniversary. We hosted a game night with some friends. We flew to Ohio to spend the last week of 2009 with my family.

All in all, we were pretty impressed with 2009!! New friends, a new house, a new job for me, fun travels, spending time with family....there's not much more we could've asked for! God has been very good to us. We're excited to see what 2010 will bring!

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, 2000 (375 pages)

I think that maybe I should stop reading Pulitzer Prize winning books. I don't seem to have very good luck with them. Maybe I'm just not cool enough or intellectual enough to truly appreciate them.

I had heard some decent things about A Heartbreaking Work, and after seeing it on some list of the "Top 100 Books of the Decade," I bumped it up on my "to read" list. However...I had so much trouble getting into this book! It literally took me a month to read. I did consider putting it down and not finishing it, but by the time I'd thought about doing that, I was already more than 100 pages in, and I felt like I should just plow through.

This book is based on true stories from the author's life, and although he had some interesting stories to tell, the book as a whole pretty much drove me nuts. Much of the book has a stream-of-consciousness narrative style, which I don't tend to enjoy. Some of the stories in the book were okay, which is why I gave it two stars (out of five) on Goodreads.

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Total number of books read in 2009: 43

Total number of pages read in 2009: 15233

A Not-So-Silent Night

A Not-So-Silent Night: the Unheard Story of Christmas and Why It Matters

by Verlyn D. Verbrugge, 2009 (98 pages)

I won this book through Goodreads's "First Reads" program. As the title implies, the author goes through the Biblical telling of the Christmas story, but he goes into further detail. He uses cultural, Biblical, and linguistic research to explain elements of the story that most of us never think about.

Many of the things that the author points out are things that I had heard before (like the fact that the "Wise Men" came a few years after the birth; that "the manger" probably wasn't some sweet, sanitary place like all the nativity scenes make it out to be). However, he did bring up a few things that I had never heard before. For example, based on other stories in the Bible, the town of Bethlehem probably wasn't very sweet or "still" like the song implies, but rather had a pretty tough reputation.

I like the fact that the book was a very quick read, and even though it was research-based, it read more like a narrative. There were a few places where I'm not sure I agree with the point that the author made (as it seems to contradict some things I've heard before), but I thought that the majority of the author's points were interesting.

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Total number of books read in 2009: 42

Total number of pages read in 2009: 14858

New Year's Eve Recap

We were planning on flying back to Seattle on New Year's Eve. Although flying on Christmas Eve and NYE wasn't ideal for our plans...we were able to use reward tickets, so our flights were free! Can't beat that. :-)

I checked us in online on the evening of the 30th, and our flight was scheduled to depart at 6:00am on the 31st. My poor parents got up super early with us and dropped us off just before 5:00. When we eventually made it to the ticket counter to drop off our luggage, we were told that the flight was oversold. If we were willing to take a later flight, we'd get to two ticket vouchers for up to $400. Since we didn't really have any big plans for the 31st, we agreed we'd take the ticket vouchers and take the later flight.

We called my parents, and they came back to pick us up. (Did I mention it was snowing that morning, and that the roads hadn't been plowed yet?) We hung out at home until about 12:30, when we were taken back to the airport. We went through security...only to discover that our 1:23 flight was delayed until 3:36. We eventually flew to Atlanta, where we were able to make our connection. Turns out, that flight from Atlanta to Seattle wasn't direct...we stopped over in Milwaukee first. (We didn't have to deplane, though.)

We finally made it to Seattle at 10:45pm. Once we got our bags, we headed to the Shuttle pick-up area, since we had made reservations to be taken home. However, we learned that our reservation didn't mean that we'd get a ride at a certain time; it simply meant that we'd get a ride on some van at some point. So when the clock struck twelve and we entered a new decade, Shawn and I were hanging out in the parking garage at SeaTac airport, still waiting for a ride. Shawn took this picture with his cell phone:
We eventually got onto a van, which dropped off two other groups first (getting lost in the U-District on the way) before dropping us off at our car (which we had left at a friends' house). Then we got to drive the rest of the way home...and arrived a bit before 2:00am.

So...that was a our New Year's Eve. Thrilling, eh? I'm hoping to get caught up with some posts over the next few days...a 2009 recap, 3 book reviews, and probably a "goals/resolutions" post. I'm sure you'll be waiting on the edge of your seat, anticipating these updates from me. :)