National Readathon Day!!!

YOU GUYS. Penguin Random House, Goodreads, Mashable and the National Book Foundation are starting a NATIONAL READATHON DAY. I cannot even begin to describe to you the amount of joy with which this fills my heart. A whole day. For READING. (Or, as I like to call it, Tuesday.)

So I’ve actually heard of libraries organizing readathons before, and I always thought it was a cool idea, and maybe a good way to promote reading for pleasure. And the other day, as I was tootling about the internet, I came across the link to a national readathon! How exciting! I immediately decided that I would be dragging Feller along with me because he likes to read, too, and what better way could we possibly spend an afternoon together?

Upon further inspection, I discovered that the readathon, in the true fashion of all -athons everywhere, is meant not just for sheer joy of reading all afternoon, but to promote and raise funds for the National Book Foundation, who bring us the National Book Award and a variety of programs designed to promote literacy in the US and help instill a love of reading in people. And who can’t get behind a group that brings attention to authors such as Jacqueline Woodson (winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young Adult) and Ursula K. Le Guin (recipient of the Medal for Distinguished Contribution and who gave a kick ass acceptance speech).

So, if you feel like supporting our readathon, and we would LOVE to have it!, click on the logo down below, which will take you to our donation page. I’ve set our goal as $100, but it would also be great to surpass that!

And if you’re interested in participating in the readathon yourself, there are venues hosting readathons all over the country, but you can also read from the comfort of your favorite reading spot. Just read along with us on January 24th, from noon-4pm!

Engaged!

In case you didn’t already know, Feller and I have decided to enter into Marital Bliss together. You know … eventually. Neither of us are in any big hurry to get it done, and while I also don’t think there’s much reason for a long engagement, Feller wants to wait until I’m done with my degree. So we’re looking at getting hitched about a year – a year and a half from now. And before I get any unwanted advice or any feelings are hurt about anything having anything to do with a wedding, we’re probably just going to run and away and not tell anyone until after it’s over. We just have too many people in too many hemispheres of the globe to tell anyone, “Hey bitches, this is where we’re getting married, you better shell out or miss out.” It’s just easier this way. Plus, we’d rather save the money that we’d spend on a wedding for a several kickass parties where ever our loved ones are or to move or to have an awesome vacation together. Neither of us care about that one day.

Feller asked me about rings in September/October, so I’ve known this was coming for some time. Unfortunately, we had some complications with the ring that caused him to put it off (apparently, you CANNOT send diamonds from South Africa to the US. You just can’t). Just when we had decided to look into other ring options and get engaged when we go to Hawaii in May, another ring complication arose, which meant that we will end up with a beautiful, amazing, meaningful ring that I will love forever … that wouldn’t be ready until several months after our Hawaii vacation, if then. Because shipping diamonds overseas is HARD, y’all (seriously, if any of y’all know how to get diamonds from the UK to California, we’d SUPER DUPER appreciate it if you’d let us know).

Anyways, Feller and I got home from a bar a couple Fridays ago, started talking about the ring and bemoaning how long this getting engaged thing is taking. Next thing I know, Feller is down on one knee in our bedroom, surrounded by all our dirty laundry and asking me to marry him. SERIOUSLY. Seriously spontaneously asking me to marry him, no planning, no ring, no nothing, and it was AMAZING. Beautiful. And as romantic as I could have possibly hoped for.

And while we wait for our diamonds, he bought me an amazingly beautiful $25 CZ ring off Amazon. I love it so much, and I can bang it around all I want at work without worrying about hurting it. Because it was TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS.