Hello friends and happy Friday to you. Oh how I do love a good weekend with a beautiful weather forecast! Yippee! And how are you today? Doing well I hope. I hope that as many of you as possible can sneak out of work a little early today (join me, please!) and go play... I mean, you know what they say about girls and boys who only work, work, work. Dull, dull, dull! So if you can, grab your little tote and make a beeline to the door when you are able, perhaps a little earlier than usual, and go do something for yourself. Even if it's only an hour. When you pause you return with more inspiration and ideas than you would have otherwise.

You know what I did before getting out of bed this morning? I started reading Julia & Julia. Have you read it? I know, I'm a bit behind. Blame the relocation for that. It was so nice to read a chapter before starting my day and the whole theme of a blogger in a film is just the sweetest thing to me. Do you remember the first time you watched You've Got Mail? With the adorable Meg Ryan and clumsy-cute Tom Hanks? Wasn't it so exciting to see that AOL mailbox on the big screen... I mean the whole idea (back then) of meeting a man online was so new and of course, AOL was the bomb back in the day. How I'd open my email program with great anticipation, hoping to find the mailbox icon and that man announcing that I had mail! Weeee! The days before massive spam overload when an email was actually personal and from someone you knew! I do not get that excited over most email these days. I've had it with viagra and private part extensions and nutty people sending me product submissions pertaining to the most abstract things like campers and grills. Yeah, we talk a lot about camping on decor8, right? Rigggght. :)

Anyway, that is how I feel reading Julie & Julia... excited. And I know I'm late to this because the film has been out in America for what, a month now? Nine years you say? Oh stop teasing me. Parts of Europe are a wee bit behind with films being released. But yes, this same exact excitement over blogging being mentioned in a film, that it has become mainstream now (at least in America and most western countries), and worthy of a mention makes me giddy. I can't wait to see the film but I've vowed to finish the book first. Have you seen it? It's just coming out here in Germany but in German and well, I only watch original English films because I'm a snob. If the movie was made in English originally then I refuse to watch it dubbed over. It's almost as bad as those old Japanese fighting films or vintage Godzilla movies. Okay, I like the old Godzilla movies... but you get my point. On the flipside, I pay the same respect for all languages, if a film is in French I will watch it with English subtitles but never dubbed over in English. Well okay, maybe a few times I've done it. (shhh) Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent here. Thanks for joining me on my rollercoaster writing adventure! Welcome to what it feels like to live inside of my head.

So! After reading and then rising for the day, I am now writing (okay, I'm captain obvious), billing and emailing about thirty thousand people back. Then I'm taking a break to sneak out and hit the bookstore for a few cookbooks (Julie has me inspired!), Balzac for iced boba tea and then I'm going to the museum to see a special exhibition I've been hoping to see and it's Free Museum Friday here so why not take advantage of a good freebie! I'll be writing on my blog too, so no worries... I won't abandon you.

In fact, I've already visited Simply Stated today and wrote a post about Chronicle Books because they have new paper products for Autumn and I really like their collections. I have a brief roundup of 9 products that I think you may like... You may visit the post here if you'd like. The image contained in this post is my bait. I like to use bait sometimes to encourage reading. :) So please bite my bait so you can be hooked on paper along with me and so you can see where each of these pretty products can be found on their website. :)

(images: chronicle books)