Book Review: I Was Told There'd Be Cake

from contemporarylit.about.com"The back cover of I Was Told There'd Be Cake says that "Sloane Crosley can do no right." This is not quite true. Although these essays detail the many misadventures of Sloane, clearly she's done something right indeed in this witty and entertaining book.Sloane Crosley is a young New Yorker. She's heard every Ferris Bueller's Day Off joke (for a grand total of 3,567 times) about her name. She attended a Christian-based summer camp for eight years, despite being "one hundred percent Jewish," and once ended up with the part of Mary in the Christmas-in-July nativity play. She had an impressively complicated time moving to a new apartment in New York City. And she has a knack for making just about any experience into a funny story.I Was Told There'd Be Cake features fifteen essays ranging from childhood to present, some with coming-of-age themes, others about making transitions and embracing change, many about the ways in which we discover our own identities. The stories vary in length and can be read in any order; you can easily take a piece or two of Cake at a time or devour the whole thing in one sitting.
I Was Told There'd Be Cake fits cozily between self-reflective tales of quarter-life crisis, such as those in Generation What?, and highly sardonic works such as Laurie Notaro's. If you're a young urban professional, if you have been young at some point, perhaps recently, or if you simply enjoy snarky humor with a little reflection (and much truth), I Was Told There'd Be Cake is an excellent choice for your summer reading list.



laura james' review: i freakin loved this book. i don't know if it was because i could pretty much relate to whatever it was she was talking about (oregon trail, being a bridesmaid, baking for a group of friends), or just because i was pretty much laughing the whole time. i'm usually not one for non-fiction, but this was a great and fast read. she has a great sense of humor and pulls you in from the very first essay. i would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a non-serious read, or pretty much anyone who is old enough to remember the original oregon trail.

Cravings

this whole no shopping thing has done a number on me. i've almost made it through the whole month of january! i am so proud...and so is my wallet! but since i am not allowed to buy anything, i've done a whole lot of internet window shopping. here are a few things i am loving, but can't buy (not like i would anyway; i can't afford a thing from jcrew). and..i haven't had a single french fry yet!!

i am still loving colorblock...especially these two colors put together (don't mind the shoes either!)

studded sweater? can you see the drool?

sweet and simple blouse. would wear this bare-shouldered at night, and under a fitted suit jacket for day.

**all pics: http://www.jcrew.com/**

Week Away

so the competition is a week away. i am so nervous, it's ridiculous. at least the costumes came in, which is the thing i was worried the most about. well, i lie about that. i was worried about them coming in, and then them fitting. but they did both. even though the blue one?? a little skankier than i remember seeing. out of the 4 pictures below, three of them are taken at the house. i apologize. i said i would stop that, but it's really hard when you're busy at work to remember to do it. or to remember to pick up your camera in the morning. i will try harder i promise. but i did get some good aperture practice shots in.

cannot go wrong with pizza for dinner, especially when it's got veggies on it!

i was really aiming for the old chevy in this pic, but got a decent shot of the alabama theater too.

packer bear. he is as old as me. he is super excited for the super bowl next sunday!!


the cookies made for the hubs today.

*38 & 39*

"sunset over penske"

latin dress. hanging...waiting for me....

i don't know if anyone has been searching through target lately looking for some make-up, but they have this new brand e.l.f. most everything on this shelf is just $1.00!! i couldn't believe it. eye liner, eye shadow, lip gloss, make-up brushes, mascara. if you haven't seen it yet, and you're ok with wearing $1.00 eyeliner (it works just as good as my almay!), you should check it out.

Days 32-37

my love.

star on our house. can't figure out why day 33 is sideways..in previews it's the correct way.

95.7 jamz. in a 60 year old something's car. made me laugh.

blue monkey love shot.

orange and blue balloons flying over jordan-hare.

vulcan.

this weekend, my friend from DC came to visit me. there's not a whole lot to do in birmingham, so we went out on friday to blue monkey, then went down to auburn for that championship celebration. she had never seen anything like it. she said it's like a religion down here! well...yeah! here are the pictures from days 32-37.

i have learned a lot from sara. although she lives so far away, she has become a big part of my life. she lives very differently than i do, and has taught me a lot. one thing that she told me to do was to start writing again. i just get scared to do it because of what happened to all of my other ones (getting stolen and God only knows where they are now). i lost all of my college years when those were taken away, and it makes me feel so awful everytime i think about not being able to go back and read everything.

Day 31

this not shopping thing is super hard. i have bad days, and i really just want to go buy a pair of shoes. or i don't feel good, or i miss my husband because he's gone for a whole week. i can probably tell you right now that the french fry thing? um, probably won't last through this weekend. i can only take one good thing away from myself at one time.

and now i'm worried that my dresses won't come in on time for the competition. the estimated delivery time was between the 22nd and the 25th. i know that i have some time, but the closer it gets to the competition (holy crap, almost two weeks!) the more nervous that i get.

hello highway 280. you're so pretty when you're not full of traffic.

Day 29 & 30

gian marco's in homewood. great italian food.

bennett and i did some organization projects this weekend around the house...yes, so productive, when usually on the weekends, we stay in our pajamas and don't do a thing. i wish i had a before for this, but even though i wasn't a super fan of having the shoes out in the open, it sure beats what we had going on before. and extra plus, now i can see *most* of my shoes, hopefully giving me more choices when i'm trying to decide what to wear in the morning.

not too much going on lately. i've had a lot of weird dreams and thoughts running through my head lately. i feel like i've failed miserably at my job the last year. i think i may have been the only district in the country that didn't beat business plan numbers. i just haven't felt very pretty lately, and i'm just sort of blah. i feel so unaccomplished for a 27 year-old. like i should have done more or should be doing more. it's an incredibly frustrating feeling, and i wish i could just snap out of it.

I believe in Auburn, and love it!

day 28 found me trekking down to auburn for a meeting with one of the owners at my agent location in, you guessed it, auburn!! this is one of my favorite agents to visit, because it's in auburn and there's a jimmy john's there. this time was extra special since the tigers won the national championship on monday. they left the toilet paper up at toomer's all week (they were finally taking it down when i drove past it this afternoon). i truly am proud of my university. coach chizik started this all family, all in this year. and from one of my earlier postings, you really can feel it when you walk on campus. and we definitely could feel the pride when we were out in arizona. i'm gonna post my picture(s) for today, and then at some point in time put up some more from the grand canyon and the game..possibly tomorrow.

samford hall.

toomer's corner.

Playing Catch-Up!

my first drink in arizona. bennett and i had had bourbon on the plane. i asked for something girly and fruity from the bartender, and this is what he brought me.

my favorite game day sign! war eagle...2010 BCS National Champs!

who distorts a wonder of the world? i do, i do! i heart my fish eye.

hello southwest...and snow! welcome to chicago!

8:31 mile split. the best i've run yet. finished 10th in my age group!! out of 74...

2 Things I'm Not Doing This Year

so in addition to my new year's resolutions, there are two things that i'm not doing this year.

1.) i am not buying any clothes.

2.) i am going to quit eating french fries.

both of these are going to be the hardest things i've done in a while. you know how they have the little circle thing letting you know where your money went? over 3/4 of mine went to clothing stores. and that is why my closet is overfilling, and yet for some reason, i never have anything to wear. so i had been following some of those people who have done the 30 for 30 clothing remix, and got the inspiration to be creative with what i do own. i have never considered myself a very fashionable person, so maybe this will force me to look outside the box. which inevitably is the goal.

one of my goals this year was to eat healthier foods. french fries are my biggest enemy. i love these things. from anywhere. so, i am going to torture myself for as long as i can. i am not promising anything, but i will try.

so to keep myself smiling while i'm trying to accomplish this, i will imagine that i have a room like this with a job like this (putting these kinds of rooms together and photographing them). i hope to be back later tonight with my daily pictures from sunday-today.

image via ikea blog.

Historic Legion Field

we went to the bbva compass bowl today. bennett works there and got free tickets, so we decided to go and check out the festivities. if you live in the ham, you know where legion field is located, is well, not the greatest of all areas to be. but it was freezing, and we only stayed until halftime. i had never been until today, and apparently it was where the iron bowl was played back in the days. the stadium is very old, but they had it all done up for the bowl today, so props to the bham team, (and of course bbva) for making legion field as pretty as they could. plus, there was a fight.

Up and Away (Day 20 and 21)

ugh, i'm so not proud of these two pictures, but the "ugh" kind of describes this past week. it's the first week getting back into gear at work. and then you look at the past year and the numbers you are responsible for and then, yikes, or oops, my bad. i really want to do a good job this year, but it doesn't help that my numbers are pretty unreachable. i guess i'll just take it and run with it. and see what happens.

this is on my drive back from montgomery yesterday. for some reason, i didn't feel the need to take my camera out for all of montgomery's downtown capital beautifulness, but took this out the window shot. i call this, my "oh crap, i haven't taken my picture today" picture.

and then there's this. so laura, what do you do with your leftover candy canes from your christmas tree?...oh, i put them in a wedding mug and then take a picture of it. geez. and i keep using this same under the cabinet lighting that makes everything look orange. you think i'd get a little more creative...and i promise i will. there are so many cities that i go to during the course of a week that have such pretty things to photograph.

red-nose 5k tomorrow. hopefully it'll get above freezing before 8:30!! then on sunday, it's off to arizona to watch my Tigers play, so there'll be a small blog hiatus!! but will come back with more pictures than you can count! have a good weekend!!!

Days 18 & 19

i hope you all are happy with this top picture, because i damn near killed myself to get it. i really wanted to have my nikon with my new lens on it to get this shot, but figured i really would get killed if i tried to pull that one out and put the lens on it. this is shot from downtown birmingham getting onto I-20/59. this is looking south toward downtown. the sunset was beautiful over the skyline of birmingham, which is what i really was trying to get, but the lights under the overpass ended up looking pretty neat.

this is a shutter from downtown birmingham on morris avenue. it looks way better in black and white than it did in color, although i love the color of old bricks.

we're leaving for phoenix in 4 days to go to the national championship game. i'm pretty excited. i will definitely get some good pictures from this trip. i'm hoping to get some good ones of the sunsets in the desert. i'm no professional, but it would be beautiful either way.

Day 17

let me introduce you to wilbur. he joined our family about a year ago. bennett bought him for me at an antique store for get this.... $1.02!!! i saw him and he looked so sad just sitting there, all on sale and no one to love him. i don't have a particular love affair for pigs ( i'm a rooster girl, hence the lamp in the background!). i know it's another around the house picture, and i promise these will stop soon. i drive all around the state of alabama for my job, and i need to start capturing some of that.

Day 16

so, today while at work, i was reading up on some photography websites. i figure that i need a better grasp on the basics, so today's picture is a practice shot of "aperture." while i sort of grasped it from the class i took, i took the time to re-read over some of the things that i didn't really get the first time around. so this is a simple picture of me trying to do a picture with a large aperture (which means, smaller depth of field...go figure.) so i'm sorry again for the "around-the-house" shot..but hey...it's a picture a day. never promised it would be interesting.

something that you may not know is that i have been invited to a ballroom dancing competition in february. below are the pictures of the dresses that i will be wearing...

this one is for my smooth dances...waltz and foxtrot.

this beauty is for the rumba and cha-cha.

i'm a little nervous about them coming and being the right size. also worried about how low the rumba one goes in the back. oy. but trust me when i say this is one of the least skanky ones i could find. at least there is no hint of my stomach showing in either of them. maybe after february, there will be some posted pictures of me and my ballroom dancing awesomeness.

wish me luck!!