I finished reading The Time Traveler's Wife this weekend. It was meh. It's supposed to be this great love story, and it kind of is, but mostly it taught me that determinism makes for pretty crappy storytelling. I will go into this in spoilery detail behind the cut.

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My 3-a-day This American Life habit has brought me back to 2007. Most of the time it doesn't matter that I'm listening to the series backwards because each episode, and each story within each episode, pretty much stands alone. However, when those stories involve news items it can feel a little surreal. The new news on the show is now old news, and ( Read more... )

Why do I keep thinking today is Friday?

It was so much fun to rile up the parents with my ignorance of the golden days of their youth, I thought I'd expand on the theme and do it again. Those of you who have ever been, or been in contact with, a 7- to 10-year-old girl have probably heard of the American Girl dolls. Originally a few dolls attached to a series of books that illustrated a ( Read more... )

Time is a funny thing. I was going through my calendar yesterday, planning out the rest of the semester, which made me realize how little time I have left here in Bologna. Three months. I've been here for five, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. It seems like I just got here and I'm already running out of time to go where I want to go, see what ( Read more... )