Traveling Books

I got a lot of reading done on my recent trip. There's nothing like solo travel and hating to talk to seatmates on planes to amp up the reading time. A couple of weeks ago I finished Vinegar Hill, which was well written, but utterly dark and hopeless.

I needed something light after that, so started in on I'm With Fatty. The story itself was interesting, a journalist sets out to lose 50 pounds in a year, but I wasn't nearly as taken by the story as I was by the writing. Witty and entertaining doesn't quite cover it here. Ugel whipped out more novel similes and metaphors than I could count, almost all apt. If you're looking for entertainment and self-loathing, this is it.

I finished I'm With Fatty on my first flight, and started in on a book I had to read for class, Still Alice. It's a fictional account of a 50 year old professor who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It's written by a neuroscientist, which makes me think it might be accurate? Accurate or not, it's engaging. It's written from the main character's perspective, so you descend with her into the Alzheimer's and see life from her perspective. Even though it was assigned for my Acquired Disorders of Language and Cognition class, I would have read it (and enjoyed it!) even if it wasn't. Fascinating.

A few weeks back we got into a discussion of Arminianism vs Calvinism at my small group, which left me at a loss for articulating the tenets of Calvinism in a way that made sense to people from outside of the tradition, so I grabbed Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport off of the shelf. I've read it before, way back, but didn't realize Richard Mouw was the author. I recently listened to him on Being, talking about Christian civility in politics, and LOVED it.

So I had started the book a couple of weeks ago and had a chance to finish it on my trip. It was really interesting to come back to it after a number of years outside of the Christian Reformed Church. There are things that still resonate for me and things I question and need to think through.

At the same time, I was also reading Exponential because someone at church asked me to. The two books could not be more opposite. I disliked Exponential almost from the beginning, but couldn't quite figure out why. Reading the two at the same time made some of it clearer. There are some values from Calvinism that were informing how I read Exponential, though that may not have become clear to me had I not been reading Mouw's book at the same time. I have to say I wouldn't really recommend Exponential unless you are looking for something to challenge your thought...or maybe you will agree with it.

I am currently without a book, which feels very shiftless. I'm looking for a new one, and have a few ideas. Crazy as it sounds, I heard Jay-Z on Fresh Air and have some interest in reading Decoded. I'm interested in The Hunger Games as well. Whatever I choose may have to wait a couple of days until Thanksgiving is over, and maybe even a few weeks after that until the semester is over. Christmas break, though, is for reading. I'm making my book list, checking it twice.

ASHA

So much going on lately, where to start....let's start here--I hate this semester. I really do detest it. It needs to be over now. And people need to have clearly stated expectations and quit surprising us with stuff, etc. etc. And I need to stop getting Bs.

On to more interesting things.

This week I was in Philadelphia for the ASHA convention. It was fabulous! I'm used to TESOL conventions which must be smaller (ASHA had 12,000 ppl this week) because I was not nearly so overwhelmed by the program book and options for sessions. ASHA could also help by organizing the sessions by time instead of subject area, but I would still probably only be able to get to about 1/5 of the sessions I want to see.

I saw quite a few really interesting sessions. One I really enjoyed looked at transition strategies for young adults who use AAC. It was really practical, and presented well, which is just as important as the content.

Another interesting research presentation looked at predicting stuttering onset in the context of the Early Language in Victoria Study. They found that you can't really predict it, so that's not great, but it was a good presentation and had some other useful information.

I was really interested in a presentation I went to on starting a private practice. It was exactly the kind of information I was hoping for too, not too detailed but not too broad either. It definitely helped me think through some of the options there.

My very favorite presentation though was Christina Santhouse talking about having the right hemisphere of her brain removed due to Rasmussen's Encephalitis. It was fascinating because not only did Christina recover from the hemispherectomy, but she finished college, earned a Master's degree and became an SLP. The PhD who presented with her said that either this type of success has not yet been documented, or does not exist. I wouldn't say it's the presentation I gained the most factual information from, but it was by far the most interesting and inspiring. Christina even had her SLP in the audience for the presentation.

When All Is Well

Last week was pretty crappy. Think breaking down in a professor's office crying, snot running down my face, hyperventilating. Kind of a mental breakdown. This semester in general has been difficult, and last week it just felt like there were far too many expectations, internal and external to live up to. Thankfully, it is in the past.

Tonight was my small group night, and we talked about our childhoods, and laughed. And laughed some more, and ended up singing the song from the commercials for My Buddy. After a crappy week like last week where there was more doubt in my mind than anything else, it just felt incredibly good to really share with people, and know that in that place I can just be myself. It was one of those nights when I left small group and just felt content.