K-Ren

Effing Brilliant

2008-11-20T19:00:03Z

So I went out at lunch today to pick up a small b-day gift for Joel.. just because I thought it would be nice for him to have something to open today, too.

I picked up the new David Sedaris book. After purchasing it, I read the book review which said this, "...delightful compilation of essays circling the theme of death and dying."

Yep. That's right. That's the book I got my husband for his 40th birthday. Go me

kbohl @ 2008-11-15T10:30:00

2008-11-15T16:40:40Z

I just watched Romeo & Juliet with Paige. She followed the story pretty well, but needed a little help along the way. Shortly after the wedding scene she says "I thought this was a tragedy. So doesn't that mean it has a sad ending? " I said yes, keep watching.

After the death of Mercutio and Tybalt - "Is this the sad part? They shouldn't have killed Mercutio." No it's not the sad part. Well, it is sad, but this isn't THE sad part. Keep watching.

After Juliet wakes to find Romeo dead and then kills herself, Paige says in disbelief, "THAT's supposed to be the sad part?!" In shock, I said yes! of course! isn't it sad that they're both dead?! And she said "Well, at least they're together, and that's what they really wanted."

Oh also

2008-11-07T14:19:51Z

This is pretty exciting. I went out for a run this morning. My usual 5k route along the lake. I left the dog at home because I wasn't in the mood for distraction.

I completed the run in 30:31. That's my best time ever. I'm pretty pleased.

Hooray

2008-11-07T14:18:25Z

My daughter came home from school with her report card yesterday. Straight As.

She even got an A in gym. I *never* got straight As. I got mostly As, but I always had either gym or penmanship mess me up (they apparently don't do penmanship anymore).

But this is a major accomplishment. Especially after all the recent nights of tears and frustration over her accelerated reading class -- she's still afraid to give her "opinion".

So tonight we're taking her out to celebrate. She wants Chinese food.

kbohl @ 2008-11-05T08:23:00

2008-11-05T14:33:03Z

I don't really talk about politics. I never feel well enough informed to speak intelligently about politics, even though I read and listen and follow as closely as I can what's happening.

But let me just say that I feel like a huge weight has been lifted. I feel relief and joy and excitement.

I want a new camera

2008-10-24T13:22:33Z

Sunrise from the campsite

I took my camera on my sunrise run, and everything was fog and mist down by the lake

Brig and I went for a bit of a hike on the Ice Age Trail.

Mauthe Lake

Camping Buddies at Sunset

Sunset from the fishing pier

Last Weekend

2008-10-24T13:15:47Z

Successful b-day party. The boy turns 40 next month, but we thought we could surpise him by having the party a month in advance, and while camping!!! Well, the clan is apparently no good at surprises -- he'd been on to us for weeks. But it was fun nontheless.

kbohl @ 2008-10-15T13:52:00

2008-10-15T18:52:52Z

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are a Joan!

You are a Joan -- "I need to succeed"

Joans are energetic, optimistic, self-assured, and goal oriented.

How to Get Along with Me

* Leave me alone when I am doing my work.

* Give me honest, but not unduly critical or judgmental, feedback.

* Help me keep my environment harmonious and peaceful.

* Don't burden me with negative emotions.

* Tell me you like being around me.

* Tell me when you're proud of me or my accomplishments.

What I Like About Being a Joan

* being optimistic, friendly, and upbeat

* providing well for my family

* being able to recover quickly from setbacks and to charge ahead to the next challenge

* staying informed, knowing what's going on

* being competent and able to get things to work efficiently

* being able to motivate people

What's Hard About Being a Joan

* having to put up with inefficiency and incompetence

* the fear on not being -- or of not being seen as -- successful

* comparing myself to people who do things better

* struggling to hang on to my success

* putting on facades in order to impress people

* always being "on." It's exhausting.

Joans as Children Often

* work hard to receive appreciation for their accomplishments

* are well liked by other children and by adults

* are among the most capable and responsible children in their class or school

* are active in school government and clubs or are quietly busy working on their own projects

Joans as Parents

* are consistent, dependable, and loyal

* struggle between wanting to spend time with their children and wanting to get more work done

* expect their children to be responsible and organized

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

KM 10k

2008-10-11T18:42:15Z

Goal was to finish in under 75 minutes. Finish time was 72:23.

Not bad.

kbohl @ 2008-10-09T17:54:00

2008-10-09T22:54:31Z

HowManyOfMe.com

There are
5
people with my name in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

NOW TO FIND THE OTHER THREE!!!

Race Post

2008-09-21T03:10:39Z

I did Al's Run today (8k/5 mile race to benefit Children's Hospital of WI) My goal was to complete it in under an hour. I completed it in 56:50. I'm pretty pleased.

kbohl @ 2008-09-08T22:07:00

2008-09-09T03:07:08Z

Two of my favorite fads, now combined!

Seriously, have I been living under a rock?

2008-09-06T01:37:55Z

WTF?! How did I not know there was a Lost Boys sequel? Has anyone seen it?

1st Day of 4th Grade

2008-09-02T17:28:03Z

Holy Crap. Can you even believe it? FOURTH GRADE!

She woke up to her own alarm clock today. She was getting ready for school when I got out of bed. She picked out her outfit* the night before, and she packed her backpack two weeks ago. She was set to go by 7:15.. we actually had to wait around a bit so that she wasn't "early" to school.

I walked her to the playground as per norm. Her "boyfriend", D. was waiting for her with her BFF. There was hugging and squeeling about clothes and shoes and backpacks (between the girls), and shy smiles and toe gazing between her and D. (which is odd because they talked on the phone at least weekly this summer). A. said hi to me and we chatted briefly. Then Paige gave me "the look" to inform me I was dismissed. She gave me a quick hug around the waist, said "'kay mom, see you tonight...." and I nodded and left. Apparently it's no longer necessary for me to sit around and wait to meet her teacher with her (although I know her teacher already, and she's actually a very nice woman).

* The Outfit: A bright pink short sleeved t-shirt that hangs just above knee level embelished with sparkly skulls and crossbones,black and white plaid leggings, pink Converse tennis shoes also covered with skulls and crossbones, long hanging silver star earings, and an arm full of silver bangles. Her hair was down, straight, and parted down the center, as always. (Photos are likely to follow).

It's pretty awesome because I pretty much let her buy whatever she wanted as far as school clothes went. She made good choices and I didn't have to veto anything. She's back to not wearing jeans, though. She went shopping this weekend with my mom(step), and was able to show Grandma which clothes she was into. Grandma bought a few outfits and handed me some cash for boots, because the girl wants new knee high boots and we haven't been able to find any decent ones yet....

Oh, and another thing that might amuse some of y'all on the f-list. Remember how I was calling P's friends "The Heathers"? Well, they still are... It's essentially the same group of girls (except one moved away this year, so we're short a girl -- I wonder how that will pan out....) Anyway, the girls all came over to my house 2 weekends ago to hang out with the girl who is moving and did a little going-away party sort of thing. I was folding laundry and ironing and pretty much letting them do their thing. Well, guess what I found them doing? That's right. Playing croquet in the back yard!! "Great pate, mom, but we've got to motor..."

kbohl @ 2008-08-20T12:02:00

2008-08-20T17:04:31Z

I'm having a very strong desire to sit at a picnic table all day today drinking coffee and chain smoking. Until about 5:00 p.m., at which time I will switch to drinking beer and chain smoking.

Sadly, though, I'm a growed up with a stupid job and I have to sit and my desk and clickedy clack at the keys while I'm under appreciated and overly annoyed with everyone.

Well, the joke's on them, mentally I'll be chain smoking and drinking at a picnic table.

kbohl @ 2008-07-06T22:08:00

2008-07-07T03:08:38Z

RUSH!

2008-06-28T05:31:48Z

Look who we met tonight!!

kbohl @ 2008-06-25T18:27:00

2008-06-25T23:33:55Z

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below. (I didn't do so bad)

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
**2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (OK, not the COMPLETE, but a whole lot of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
**16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
**52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White</i>
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

**if I don't hurry up and read these books, I think my husband will tie me to a chair and read them to me pretty soon.

Teh Bohlz

2008-06-10T01:34:48Z

Create your own family sticker graphic at pYzam.com

kbohl @ 2008-05-29T06:57:00

2008-05-29T11:57:07Z

I've created a filter for my babbling posts about running and stats -- I've included those friends who seem interested in that sort of thing.

If you want in on it, let me know. Likewise, if you want out, just say so. I won't be offended :)

heh

2008-05-12T00:45:13Z

My daughter bought me the most awesome Mother's Day Gift.

My very own Webkinz

It's a frog.

I've named him "Michigan J."

I offered to let her have custody of him in her own Webkinz house (she is now a proud owner of 2 pets). She insisted that I create my own Webkinz home, and that Michigan J. can just come over to play with Cookie and Thumper.

So uncultured. I've got some reading to do.

2008-04-28T12:59:03Z

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

My kind of town....

2008-04-22T13:03:08Z

Well, it's taken me 4.5 months, but I've finally made it to Chicago. 75 miles.

x-posted to running_journey

Whoot!

2008-04-18T13:27:50Z

Despite having been pretty lazy for much of the winter, now that spring appears to have sprung, I'm back at it. I've run about 5k per day since Saturday. Well. I've "gone" 5k per day. I'm not running the entirety of it without stopping at this point. But each day brings me a little closer.

Last night was a good run. Here's a couple of reasons why:

1) I ran the first mile in under 10 minutes (ok, it was 9:53 but that's still under 10 minutes). I've never done that before. I know that's not a big deal to most real "Runners" out there, but it's a huge deal for me.

2) I ran the first 1.5 miles without stopping, then walked for .5 miles and ran the last mile again without stopping. I certainly didn't need to walk the middle half-mile, but I had it planned in my head, and that was the way I needed the run to go.

3) I got a lot of thinking done last night while I ran. And it wasn't that crazy frivolous jabber-thought that I usually have with myself. It was real honest "what are you going to do with yourself?" thought. And it was Good.

FINALLY!

2008-04-14T17:31:29Z

Saturday was a lazy day.

Joel did a bit of napping -- recovering from the jet lag. So I decided to take P to the library for a few hours, content that it would be a rainy cold lazy Saturday.

She surprised me.

After months and months of me trying to convince her to check out the Harry Potter books, I decided to give it a rest, realizing that she'll come around to it when she's damned good and ready. I let her loose* in the "Young Reader" section** and I went off in search of some Hal Higdon books. I told her to meet up with me near the couches and we could read together.

I found my book pretty quickly and imagined that I'd have beat P to the reading couch. I was wrong. There she was already several pages in to Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone. After months and months and months of me trying to convince her to pick up these books, I decided to give up on trying to convince her. I realized that she'd come around when she was good and ready. Well, apparently, all it took was for me to not suggest it this one time.

She finished the first chapter and said "OK. We can go home. I'm getting this book."***

I went to wake Joel up, and I figured that P would high-tail it to her bedroom to play on the computer or call a friend, as she had just spent an hour at the library and was done reading for a while. Wrong. When I came back to the living room to settle down with my book, I found the girl in her favorite reading position on the couch - upside down (back on seat of couch, butt on back of couch, with her legs dangling over the back) and absolutely engrossed in the story.

She read more than 140 pages on Saturday afternoon****. And then wanted to talk and talk and talk about it. And about all the stuff the movies missed and how proud she is that she read more than 140 pages in one afternoon. Wow. Thank you Ms. Rowling. This is awesome.

* It's somehow still a little scary to just let her wander around by herself. Bad Things can happen anywhere. But she's 8 (and a half) and she'll never really explore books on her own if I'm there trying to nudge her in the direction I want her to go.

**It thrills me and depresses me that she's no longer a fan of the Children's section.

*** Paige is the kind of girl who needs to really try a book on for size before making the commitment to check it out from the library. She's funny that way. If she comes home with a book, she's going to read it. Period.

**** This is fantastic. Because up to this point, P is a little lazy when it comes to her "reading for fun". We end up with Junie B. Jones books and Captain Underpants books (I hate both of these book series -- they make me want to scream -- Joel reminds me that she's just having fun and it's better than watching TV so I should shut the hell up. He's probably right, but still....)