Book Club Friday: The Hunger Games (eek!)

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably at least heard about the cultural phenomenon The Hunger Games, first a best-selling trilogy and now a box office hit. I first read the trilogy back in the fall, and I recently reread all three books in anticipation of the midnight showing last week. It only seems appropriate to dedicate this week's Book Club Friday to the first (and best) of the three.

Confession: When it comes to books, I can be a bit of a snob. The more popular a novel, series, or author is with a mainstream audience, the more I resist reading. After years of my favorite librarians telling me to try Harry Potter, I finally acquiesced one Christmas Eve while visiting my mom's family. I was 12 1/2 years old, and my aunt & uncle had just given my family the first three Harry Potter novels. Having already finished the 25 books I'd brought with me for our two-week vacation, I reluctantly started Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. My life has never been the same. I only read Twilight because I had to work the midnight release party for Breaking Dawn--and because bookstore employees could "check out" books from the bookstore like a library.

This fall, I gave in to all my friends who were encouraging me to try Suzanne Collins's trilogy.

I will be eternally grateful for all their harassment.

 

A Virgin's Visit to Planned Parenthood

Before I left New York, I had one last very important thing to do: make an appointment at Planned Parenthood for a pap smear, a pelvic exam, and, most importantly, a prescription for birth control.

I've mentioned this need for the Pill before, way back in September. But changing pharmacies and states meant I couldn't transfer my prescription, so I had one blissful month on the Pill, with minimal cramps, before I returned to my normal debilitating pain. To get a new prescription required seeing a doctor, but I hate going to the doctor, and I was scared about facing my first gynecological exam. I kept putting it off, hoping my cramps would lessen each month, but they never did. So finally, the week before I moved to Toronto, I called Planned Parenthood and scheduled an appointment.

I have health insurance, but my network only includes doctors in my home state, except in the case of emergencies. Luckily for me, Planned Parenthood charges the uninsured based on our income. Unluckily for me, I still paid about half of what I earn in a week (well, half of what I earned before I received my raise for moving to Toronto).

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Protesters waving brochures in my face, calling me a murderess, throwing pig's blood on my car? I've seen video footage and read firsthand accounts of how far extremists have gone outside clinics.

The Boyfriend and OKC (Part One): Desperate Men and Shy Women

Oh. Em. Gee! You guys!!!! Yes, I'm dating the most amazing man ever, who loves me so much that not only does he support me blogging about our love life, but look! He wrote the very first guest post (requests for more guest posts coming soon--big thanks for my volunteers!) to be featured here! *le sigh* I'm a lucky lucky lady... But without further ado, an introduction to online dating, in his own words...

Hello to everyone out there. Here I am... Man friend, boyfriend, beau_vierge, whatever you want to call me (I don’t need to be anon, but Belle wants to be, and I support that). Belle asked for guest posts, and I finally got the time to write one. So here it goes.*

*Warning, this post will read like it’s written by an engineer. Sorry, I can’t help it. It may contain math, statistics, and excessive logic.

I joined OKC back in April of 2010. Yeah, that’s a crazy long time ago. OKC was a new site at the time, and I LOVED the statistics it used. Match percentages, algorithms, and the best part, OKTrends. I had tried a few dating websites before, but only free ones. I looked at the pay dating sites, but they are all run like scams. Sure, just sign right up, and then we’ll tell you how much the monthly cost is...

More than them not saying the price, the worst part about pay dating sites is the incentives. The incentive is for them to make money, right? Well, the billing system is set up on a unit time basis... So the longer you are on the dating site, the more money they make. Sounds like their incentive is for you NOT to find dates. For a more detailed explanation, check out this website: http://static.izs.me/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating.html

Note that it’s an archived page because OKTrends took it down... Which brings me to yet another reason I am excessively lucky. I found Belle just after Match.com acquired OKC, and thus their website is in decline, and my favorite part, OKTrends, died. As a result, I would have quit the site and missed meeting the woman of my dreams.

But this isn’t what you came here for, listening to me rant about pay dating websites--it was to hear about my experience. Well, I think this is a good lead-in as to why online dating is fundamentally broken. There are two simple reasons: