Matched by Ally Condie

Now that I've finished school I can enjoy some leisure reading time again!  With that time I was finally able to finish reading the book that everyone had been talking about months ago:  Matched by Ally Condie.

This book is set in a dystopic 1984-esque future where the population does not get to decide anything.  They don't get to decide what they eat, what they wear, who they marry, or what profession they will have.  Cassia has the unthinkable happen, she gets matched up with her best friend Xander.  But, when she puts his microchip in to view his information another face pops up on the screen.  The different face changes everything for Cassia, and now she must decide what to do when the infallible Society makes a mistake.

Once I had the time I raced through this book.  Cassia did get on my nerves a little bit with her selfishness near the end, but then none of us are saints.  This book is the first of a planned trilogy, so it isn't tied up at the end and readers are left wanting to know what happens.  I did start to wonder why people would want to live the way that they do in this society.

I'm looking forward to the second book in this trilogy and can't wait to get my hands on more books and just READ!

Milestone

Warning:  This is going to be one of those sentimental type posts.  If sentiment is not what you are looking for, feel free to scroll down some and enjoy the snark in my earlier posts.

Obviously, I suck at blogging regularly and I seriously need to get on it.

That said, today is a momentous day for me.  Or well yesterday was, but I was too busy enjoying it to blog about it, so I am blogging about it today.  Yesterday was a day I'd been shooting for for over 3 years.  I finished college, I lost 150 lbs, and I finally have a clean house.  While one of those doesn't seem to fit with the others they are all tots important goals for me.

3 years ago I was mega heavy, married to a douchecanoe hoarder, and without a college degree.  I'm a smart person, but college just never worked for me.  Between being bored, and having some serious social anxiety issues, I just couldn't deal with it and made a few failed attempts that panned out to a whole lot of nothing.  I finally got my shit together though and went back to an online program and worked hard.  Along the way I did learn a lot of stuff, but I mostly learned that I don't have to be perfect.  Getting a 4.0 was not worth my sanity, and A or a B is just fine.

A few weeks ago I ran my first 5k.  I've walked 5ks before, and technically I probably more jogged this one than ran it, but it was more than walking and that's what counts.  3 years ago I wouldn't have been able to walk a 5k, let alone run one.  Hell, 15 years ago I'd barely have been able to run a 5k.  I've never been able to run long distances.  I've always been short, and heavy, and only able to sprint.  Once I lost the weight I decided to do something challenging and started running and now I love it.  I may never be able to do a marathon, but I can do something I couldn't ever do.

The final thing I accomplished is my house.  Now mind you I did not do this alone.  I've had help along the way, most recently I've had the help of lots of energy drinks pumped into my amazing boyfriend which make him uncomfortably energetic and make him clean a lot.  But seriously, I lived with a hoarder for years, and my house was a mess, and I couldn't have friends over.  It sucked.  Now, my house is nowhere near perfect, but it's cleaned up, it has a pink wall in the living room, is soon to have some awesome graffiti on the walls (thanks to my awesome BFF!) and I can have people over!  It sound lame, but it is super awesome.

Today is the start of a new part of my life where I get to make new goals and work towards them.  One of the is going to be getting my Master of Library Science (MLS) degree.