Has anyone read this book, Julie and Julia by Julie Powell?  I just finished reading it here, in Italy.  I am on vacation and spending a good deal of time on planes, trains, buses, and in a car.  This is time which I am content to spend looking out windows and watching the rolling hills of Tuscany and soaking in the various iconic and historic sites of Italy, but it is also time that I am very happy to spend reading…my nose buried in a book…my mind far, far away from Italy. 

Julie and Julia was a very fun read, but it was so much more.  While it certainly took me far away from the public transportation systems in Italy, it also took me a little too close to home.  I felt that I related to Powell  on so many levels, and because of this, I found myself analyzing aspects of my life as she shared her life with us readers.  I marvelled at her project and wished that I had thought of such a thing.  I cheered for her through the book, and as the book ended, I found myself wanting to cheer for me too.  But, I don’t have a project like Powell.  I actually don’t know where to begin.

My blog was started about a year ago. In Julie and Julia, Powell writes about her own blog…which of course was the vehicle and catalyst that led to pretty much everything else that unfolded for her afterwards.  Thinking about her blog (and how she was a little compulsive about checking for responses from her “bleaders”), I decided to check my own.  And, would you know, that very day there was a new comment from a reader???  I had not posted anything on this blog since January, but as coincidences have it, there was a comment the same day that I contemplated working on it again.  I took it as a sign.

Now, I am determined to come up with a project.  Maybe it has to do with Italy, maybe Powell and her book, and maybe it is all a coincidence.  But, I am determined.

Melissa 🙂

ps…has anyone seen the movie?