Hedgehog Life: January 2015

It is the midway point in January - the first month of our glorious new year! Okay, maybe that's a little much, but seriously - this year has started out great for me. And I hope it's doing the same for you guys!

BookCon plans have been finalized! I have my plane ticket and my hotel booked! Now I get to do the fun part: decide what books to bring with me, what authors to visit, and what bookstores to plunder (because we bookworms plunder bookstores!). I'm still not entirely believing that this trip is happening. I don't think I'll believe it until I'm at the airport and on my plane. I hope to see some of you guys at BookCon! Swap book recommendations, snap pictures, wig out over the sheer awesomeness of the whole thing!

January has been a "To-Do List" month. I've been outlining what books to buy through Winter and Spring. I've been planning out my closet renovation, how to fit a new bedframe through my extremely narrow hallway into my room (I'm finally getting a new bedframe sometime next month!! Yes!!!!), what books I want to read and what reading challenges I want to participate in, what author events to attend, et cetera.

Probably the most fun thing has been creating my "future travel/adventure plans" list. As you all know, I most definitely plan on visiting the British Isles one of these days. That is totally happening. But that got me thinking about all these other things I would like to do, too! There's the Lindy Hop Festival in Housten, Texas; the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon; the annual Vienna tour the Seattle classical station puts on; explore Iceland on horseback; and of course - road trips. I have never been on a real road trip before! How sad is that?! So I've been making a list of places I want to travel to (yes, Italy is on that list somewhere; I would love to a food tour of Italy).

I've also got some other things I want to do. Life goals, if you will. I'm taking my driver's test soon, and that's going to open up so much more time and places for me! I am actually looking at going back to college soon. For - get this - forensic studies! Didn't see that coming, did you? Yeah, I still plan on being a published writer someday, but I don't really want to make that my career. A few months back, I realized that forensics has always fascinated me, and a few local colleges have really good forensics programs. I'm also getting back into some old activities that I miss - like hiking, archery, kayaking, horseback riding, and in a few year's, I'm going to look into getting a pilot's license. Because there is one simple fact that as a bookworm I have to acknowledge: in all of my favorite adventure novels, the protagonist never knows how to fly a plane, but they inevitably have to. Well, I won't find myself in that situation any time soon. Because I'll have my license! ;-)

January was also my first time rock climbing! That was tons of fun. I sucked at it, of course. But it's something I'm definitely going to do on a regular basis, so I don't suck at it next time! Practice makes perfect, right? By the end of 2015, this bookworm is going to have one awesome set of skills! Just call me Miss Adventurous from now on. ;-)

Reading-wise, the month started out slow because I was busy and also in a bit of a reading funk - even though I was totally in love with the book I was reading (i.e. Firefight by Brandon Sanderson). We got some local flooding, and that had me worried about friends and therefore distracted. But since then, I've devoured quite a few good books, and I'm also back on track with my blog (sorry about that!). I powered my way through the rest of Firefight, then the ARC of All the Bright Places (which gave me a hankering for more roadtrip fiction), and Ticker. Pretty good comeback, if I do say so myself!

Due to flooding, though, I didn't end up meeting Brandon Sanderson. So sad! But my ride was totally flooded in and we had to make an executive decision: wait 'til the morning to see if the flood waters would recede? Or throw in the towel and go swing dancing after all? We chose the latter. And the water did recede by the morning, but once the decision was made, it was made. It's hard to feel like I made the wrong decision, though, because I love swing so much!

Next year, Brandon Sanderson! I will meet you next year!

So that's been January for me so far! Oh yes, and we got a third donkey. I don't know why we got a third one. Mum has decided to start collecting, I guess.

Here's hoping your January is fabulous and the beginning of new things!