On Not Reading and Weeding

I've been finding Week 4 of AW really frustrating.  The no reading thing has been difficult, and I'm afraid I'm losing brain cells because of it.  On the upside, I'm just as glad to have an excuse not to read some of the things I insist on reading:  the subway papers (as surprisingly interesting as they are sometimes), and the magazines that pile up in our apartment:  Rolling Stone, Time Out, L Magazine, the Lo-Down (art directed by one of our early guest bloggers, Kim).  There are so many to distract me! 

So this part as been good.  I've also been listening to music more, mostly in the way of YouTube clips and channels.  A had an XTC channel going last night when I was cleaning out the kids' room to prepare it for painting, hauling up armload after armload of weeded picture books.   I must have collected next to a thousand for my kids over the years.  And while, we are holding onto a lot, I'm getting rid of a lot, too, dispersing them around, trying to sell some to a local used bookstore.

 Instead of reading, I've been reorganizing and weeding (in library land, we call this "de-selecting") my own book collection.  I've also been building decorative book towers like the one above, based on this shelving unit pictured below. 

It's been frustrating, however, maddening handling all my books without being able to read any of them.

Since this is still a six-month assessment, one of my New Year's resolutions was to see more live music, so tonight I saw Joseph Arthur, the same musician I saw (in the same venue) on Jan 1.  From the stage that night, JA read his New Year's resolutions.  Tonight, I wanted to ask him how they were going.

I Want You on Vayable

In a year of thinking differently (thx, SJ!) and thinking better, my friend submitted a service to Vayable.com--a new site that connects travelers, tourists, and/or residents to really cool services that the locals are offering.

So far, the site is lousy with creative types in all the usual places: New York, San Franciso, Seattle--but NOTHING in Utah, so get on it, Utah peeps. My lovely and talented friend, Kim's service is outlined below in this very pleasing video:

 Looking forward to going to see a fellow elementary-school parent, Marcel Van Dam, perform at the Sidewalk Cafe tonight. It's not directly up my alley, but I'm excited about it, as I haven't seen any live music since the night of New Year's Day--PLUS, the dude's donating all of his tips to our school's PTA. Here is Marcel's mini-jam:

 It's a beautiful day here on the lower east side, but I haven't ventured out yet, so no tights-related decisions have been made. Sometimes Saturday's lack of structure is hard for me. What are you doing?