Q is for Quiet.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that starts with the day's letter.

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life, Tony Dungy.

I hate American football, with all that is within me, and I still managed to love this book.







What's your favourite 'Q' book?

P is for Phantom.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter. You're probably tired of reading that by now, aren't you? Well, I never know when a new person might wander round.

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Jester











What's your favourite 'P' book?

Runners up: The Princess Diaries, series; The Princess Bride

O is for On.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that starts with the day's letter.

And after a few hard days, it's nice to have an easy one!

On Writing, Stephen King











What's your favourite 'O' book?

Runner-up: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

N is for Narnia.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that starts with the day's letter.

The Chronicles of Narnia, series, C.S. Lewis

If we ever have any need for a nursery, it will be decorated in a Narnia theme. I'm not sure if Chadwick knows this, but it doesn't matter. He gets no say in this one. :)






What's your favourite 'N' book?

Runners up: The Night Circus, No Impact Man

M is for Million. And Mrs.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter.

And it's getting harder to choose as I go along. So I'll go with my favourite method of settling difficult questions and choose more than one.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller










and

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats and NIMH, series, Robert C. O'Brien










Tomorrow I'll try to stick to just one. Really. In the meantime, what's your favourite 'M' book?

Runners up: Mercury Falls, Mile Markers: The 26.2 Most Important Reason Why Women Run

L is for Little.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that starts with the day's letter.

And today is a doozy. Not only is it a tie, but I can also say I've seen every TV/movie adaptation of the winners and one runner-up, and as many as possible of the second runner-up. We're talking many, many hours of my life spent with these stories, y'all. They are part of my entire being.

Little House on the Prarie, series, Laura Ingalls Wilder

The first book I ever read and I've never outgrown it! I had to reread this series a lot as I was growing up to "get it" as Laura hit different stages of her life-- her wedding, for instance, was not that interesting to 8-year-old me, but 15-year-old me saw things very differently.





And

Little Women, series, Louisa May Alcott

So, true story (I've probably shared this before): I tried to check out Little Women from the school library when I was not really ready to read it, but this wasn't my first Alcott book and I thought I was ready for the really long one. I was not, of course, and the librarian correctly refused to let me check it out. So I went and grabbed the next book off the shelf, Little Men, which is much shorter (and incidentally has a MUCH easier plot-- it was not a bad one for me to read first), and the librarian frowned and said, "I'd rather you read Little Women than read this!" Which kind of scared me off and I think I ended up with The Boxcar Children or something that day. But years later when I finally read the entire Little Women series, I realised that librarian had never read any of them, or at least had a poor memory, as there was nothing even a little bit scandalous in Little Men.

What's your favourite book that starts with 'L'?

Runners up: L books are even worse than H books! Holy library card, Batman. A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett (when my grandfather watched the 1995 adaptation of this book with me, he cried more than I did); Les Misérables, Victor Hugo.

K is for Knit.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or series of books that starts with that day's letter. Kinda.

Today's is another stretch. I have two books on my Goodreads list that start with K, and I didn't like either of them enough for them to be on this list. So, I give you:

At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much, Stephanie Pearl-McKee





Image from Goodreads.




Somebody, please, tell me there are great books that start with K that I'm missing out on!

J is for Jane.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or series that begins (ish) with the day's letter.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë





Image from Goodreads.





(Incidentally, my bicycle is named after Charlotte Brontë, but we call it Sharlie for short. I know, it's crazy.) What's your favourite J book?

I is for Imaginarium.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where each day I share my favourite book or series of books beginning with the day's letter.

And this one is stretching it a bit. Could have gone under "Chronicles" or "Dragon", but here it is. I don't have many I books on my list.

Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, series, James A. Owen.




Image from Goodreads.






What's your favourite book that starts with I?

Runner up: The Indian in the Cupboard, series, Lynne Reid Banks.

H is for Hitchhikers and Harry.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter.

Well, these were always going to be pretty obvious, weren't they? Another tie of supreme awesomeness.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, series, Douglas Adams

This is the British cover,
in case you haven't seen
it before.

Harry Potter, series, J.K. Rowling













Images from Goodreads.

I don't know why you'd need another favourite H book besides these, but I suppose there are a few non-fantasy people out there, so have at it in the comments.

Runners up: Why do so many great books start with H? Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones; The Hunger Games, series, Suzanne Collins. (Yes, I know Howl's is also a series, but I haven't read the rest yet. It got into the runners up on the strength of the first book.)

G is for Gift.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter.

The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry





Image from Goodreads.






What's your favourite G book?

Runner up: The Giver, Lois Lowry.

F is for Finding.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that begins with that day's letter.

Finding Peggy: A Glasgow Childhood, Meg Henderson




Image from Goodreads.






Not only my favourite 'F' book, but in my top 5 all-time favourites. What's your favourite book that starts with F?

Runner up: Forever Liesl, Charmian Carr

E is for Earth. And Eats.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter.

And today is a tie, because I couldn't choose between these two:

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, Carolyn Mackler










and

Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss









Images from Goodreads.

What's your favourite 'E' book?

Runner up: Encyclopedia Brown, series

D is for Discworld.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter.

Discworld, series, Terry Pratchett











I love, love, love this series. The Discworld series has 40+ books, each one better than the last. Night Watch, pictured, is probably my most enduring favourite, but it really depends on the day and what mood I'm in.

Image from Goodreads.

Discworld fans: What's your favourite? The rest of you: Why are you wasting time here? Go read a Discworld book!

Runner up: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

C is for Chalet.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter.

Chalet School, series, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer










Image from Goodreads.

Discovered these when I lived in Britain & haven't been able to tear myself away ever since. Not the beginnings of my love for school stories, but definitely didn't hurt.

What's your favourite 'C' book?

Runners up: Charlotte Sometimes, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch

B is for Brief.

It's the A to Z Challenge, where every day I share my favourite book or book series that begins with the day's letter.

The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier










Image from Goodreads.

What's your favourite 'B' book?

Runners up: Bounce, Bridget Jones's Diary.

A is for Anne. And Across.

Geez, the first day of A to Z and I already have a tie! So not cool!

So, this A to Z series is all about my favourite book, or series of books, that begins with the letter of the day. I couldn't decide between:

Anne of Green Gables, series, L.M. Montgomery










and

Across the Universe, series, Beth Revis










Images from Goodreads.

So! Two fairly different genres to kick us off. What's your favourite 'A' book?

Runners up: Anna and the French Kiss, As the Waltz Was Ending

Here We Come A-Conferencing

Tomorrow the A to Z Challenge starts, so that makes today my last chance to talk about the conference I went to/spoke at/helped put on last week. I spent one day at the same conference in 2012, and managed to get five different posts out of it, but this year, when I attended all three days and was way more involved, I get one. Here goes.

So! I was one of the 70-ish speakers on the docket, and my talk was scheduled for the very first session on the very first day. Not scary at all, right? Actually, I was a lot less nervous than I would have liked-- I rely on the butterflies to give me an extra burst of energy. It's the same adrenaline I use on race days. But, despite my coworkers' best efforts to freak me out (almost every one of them stopped me some time during the 12 hours preceding my session to reassure me that I didn't need to be nervous and I would do just fine, and after the fifth go-round I was starting to worry that they had no confidence in me at all), I was way too calm.

So, this is what I looked like:

Picture courtesy of @donnaleehoffman.

I was talking about social media. If you thought I was talking about bicycles or advocacy things that go beyond social media, you are quite mad. Not my skill set.

So after the session my day kind of went downhill, because we were frenzied and racing round and it just happened I caught one coworker after another in a moment of unhappiness until by the end of the day I was convinced I had somehow angered them all, so being as I am overly sensitive to other people's moods and how they relate to me, I was in a pretty dark place by Wednesday night. We got it sorted out before I went to bed, and I got up the next day for a three-mile relaxation run, which made the next day go so much better.

Do I remember the rest of what happened? Well, as the designated Social Media Goddess at BikeTexas (that's my preferred title that I tell friends, not the official one on my email or business cards), I was responsible for tweeting, retweeting, Facebook posting, and other things that required staring at a screen for about 72 hours straight. So, no, I have my tweets to remind me of what happened. And a three-day headache, I might add, because human eyes were not designed for that much screen time.

I do know the conference was super-successful and so much fun, and I got to cap it all off with a B-cycle ride around downtown with a coworker on Friday night-- also to shake off some adrenaline so we could sleep. (Well, that's what I was doing. No idea what he was doing.)

We passed this:

Seventh Street Bridge in Fort Worth. Picture courtesy of @jacksanford.

 And this:

Tilley Bike/Pedestrian Bridge in Fort Worth. Photo courtesy of @jacksanford.

And one more picture for good measure:

Picture courtesy of @SafeCyclist.

We were loading bikes into one of our vehicles, and it was taking a while, so I decided to test this one out and make sure it worked properly. It does.

And for my final (sappy) thought: My coworkers are fabulous, knowledgeable, passionate, dedicated advocates, for whom I have tons of respect. The knowledge gap between me and the rest of them when it comes to our field is huge, and events like this remind me of just how huge it really is. I work at BikeTexas because I have some skill with words and a brain full of social media savvy, but that doesn't mean I don't wish I had the same knowledge and skills that my coworkers do. I need to work super-hard to make that gap a bit smaller.

Tl;dr: I went to a conference with my work last week. I experienced all the emotions in just three days. It was a great week.

It's a Challenge

Yep. I signed up. Again. I'm a slow learner.

This year's theme? Books! (What else?) Every day I'll post my favourite book (or favourite series of books) that starts with the day's letter. The fun begins April 1.

You know, the same day the busiest month of the spring semester begins. Sigh...

Fuel to the Fire

Last week, I realised I was going to miss kind of an important deadline at school, so I dashed off an apologetic email to a prof (and then was too nervous to check my email for three days) and then spent the rest of the week stressed out and trying to finish off the project that was already late.

When I finally checked my email, I found out things were not as dire as I had thought they were. But the project is finished and turned in, and I'm exhausted

Seriously:

Chadwick asked me this afternoon if I was feeling okay, and I had to explain to him that while he's grown accustomed this week to me racing about in an adrenaline-fueled panic, which was aided by my own insistence in getting up in the middle of the night for two weeks to watch Australian Open matches, that's not actually my norm. In fact, I've spent most of the day trying to remind myself that I have no reason to be stressed out today, because by some miracle I'm caught up with all my homework right now and even have a handle on things at work. (For normal people, being caught up during the second week of the semester would not require any miracles. Not me, though.)

It can't possibly be this healthy for 21st-century people to burn through our adrenal glands this fast. But I hate to be left out, so I'm sure I'll be back on it in a couple of days.

What do you do to handle your stress?