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From dettiotThe top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. 1984A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Angela’s Ashes : a memoir Anna KareninaBeloved Brave New World
Crime and Punishment Dracula Emma
Frankenstein Great Expectations Gulliver’s TravelsIn Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences Jane EyreLolita
Love in the Time of Cholera Mansfield Park Memoirs of a GeishaMiddlemarch Moby Dick Mrs. Dalloway
Northanger Abbey Oliver Twist On the Road One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
One Hundred Years of Solitude Persuasion Pride and Prejudice Sense and SensibilityTess of the D’Urbervilles The Blind Assassin The Canterbury TalesThe Catcher in the Rye The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-TimeThe God of Small Things The HobbitThe Picture of Dorian Gray The Poisonwood Bible : a novelThe PrinceThe Silmarillion The Tale of Two Cities
The Unbearable Lightness of Being To the LighthouseTreasure IslandWar and Peace Watership Down Wuthering HeightsCatch-22Guns, Germs, and Steel Life of Pi : a novelThe Brothers Karamazov The Iliad Ulysses
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values A Clockwork OrangeA Confederacy of Dunces A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man A Short History of Nearly Everything American GodsAnansi Boys Angels & DemonsAtlas Shrugged Cloud Atlas Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed CryptonomiconDavid Copperfield Don Quixote Dubliners Dune Eats, Shoots & LeavesFoucault’s Pendulum Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything Gravity’s Rainbow Inferno Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Les MisérablesMadame Bovary Middlesex Neverwhere
Oryx and Crake Quicksilver Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books Slaughterhouse-fiveThe Aeneid The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay The Confusion The Count of Monte Cristo The Fountainhead The Grapes of WrathThe Historian : a novel
The Hunchback of Notre Dame The Kite RunnerThe Mists of AvalonThe Name of the Rose The OdysseyThe Once and Future KingThe Satanic Verses The Scarlet LetterThe Sound and the Fury The Time Traveler’s WifeVanity Fair White Teeth Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
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Not really, of course. There's no rest for the wicked. But I'm on my last day of my mini stay-at-home vacation, and I really don't want to go back to work tomorrow.
Yesterday I laid out most of the tile in the bathroom, and tried to cut tile to fit the edges. Of course, the tile cutter I had wasn't up to the job so last night the husband and I went to the great home improvement warehouse and got a different kind...hopefully it will work well, and quickly, and I can get this job DONE.
I also put away the hip deep pile of laundry that has been spread across the bedroom floor. Now that was an accomplishment! I got a new dresser, and hopefully I can keep my laundry under control with the additional storage space.
Today, I need to do laundry, finish cutting and laying tile, and try my hand at adhering it to the ground. I also need to make more UltraSimple broth and prep rice and veggies for lunch tomorrow. Being on this diet has been remarkably easy the last couple days, but I think it'll be much harder once I'm back behind my desk and away from my kitchen.
In other related news, I think this diet is a very good thing. I feel clear-headed and moderately energetic. I slept great last night. And I weighed myself this morning and found that I've lost three pounds since Sunday morning. That's AWESOME. I don't know if I'll keep this up completely after the week is up, but I'm definitely going to try eating mostly veggies and staying away from the processed stuff.
Okay...time to do a little cooking and make my last day off a good one.
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I'm trying an experiment.
Those of you who know me know I haven't been particularly happy lately. Big fight with my husband (it's almost okay now), dissatisfaction at work (I still don't like being an administrator), annoyance with my crotchety old house. But overlaying all of my specific problems has been a sense of general discontent with my life. And, attached to that, low energy, regular weight gain, headaches, etc.
So, today starts my experiment: the UltraSimple Diet. This diet purports to raise your metabolism, help eliminate common health concerns, raise allergy and, oh yeah, can help you lose 7-10 pounds in a week.
I just had breakfast: 2 tablespoons of olive oil with lemon (to flush the liver), a glass of hot water with lemon (to take the taste of olive oil out of your mouth, I assume?), a cup of green tea (yummy), and the "UltraSimple Shake" - tofu, soy milk, frozen fruit, flax meal, combination flax and borage oil, almond butter - not a bad breakfast, although I am still a bit hungry.
For snacks I get "ultrabroth" (veggie broth...yum), and lunch and dinner are both brown rice, veggies, and some protein. I think I can do this. And hopefully it'll make me feel better.
Wish me luck!
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dontfeedthetiki gave me her old "student" violin to act as my in-the-woods instrument, since the past two years my Lady Macbeth has succumbed to humidity and required surgery to be playable again. After several months, a trip to the luthier and a couple of orders of Shar, the beater might actually be ready to use. She has: - A new bridge (a viola bridge, actually -- there's something screwy with the fingerboard, and she needed a very high bridge to work)
- Entirely new strings (umm...you don't want to know how many I popped putting the new ones on)
- Fine tuners (purchased after I popped the third and fourth strings)
- A new chinrest
- A new bow (fiberglass, durable, cheap
She's still definitely a beater instrument, and it's going to take awhile to get used to playing her. I'm not sure yet if I want to take her to the hippie wedding tomorrow or not -- I have some pride, and at this point I sound rather like a rank beginner on her. But, I don't really want to take the Lady, and I'd love to be involved in music-making if music-making is going on. Decisions, decisions. Maybe I'll wake up early and do some exercises. Also, she needs a name. My violin is Lady Macbeth, my viola is Ophelia (I was obsessed with both Mercedes Lackey's bardic voices books, and with Shakespeare, when I was naming my instruments). I don't think this one is quite ready for a Shakespearean name. Any suggestions? I could just name her "Tiki," after the one who gifted her to me.
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Some friends (hi, dontfeedthetiki!), my husband and I will be leaving in a couple of weeks to go up to New York for a festival. This is the...fourth year we've gone, I think, and every year it gets better. I begin anticipating and planning for the trip a good six months in advance, and I'm gradually getting more and more excited. My excitement has manifested in several ways -- I've begun meal planning, making sure we have all the supplies we need, and blogsearching to see if anyone else is as excited as I am. I found a few posts from people who are going, and that made me think: this year, for the first time, the husband and I will be going up for the whole week. We're very much homebodies, and just hang out at our camp most of the time, and we don't mix and mingle much. This is a pagan festival, and I'm pagan only in the most general "not a Christian, Jew or Muslim" sense, and I often feel like we don't really fit in. We usually hang out with the druids, a very hospitable group, but I'd like to expand my horizons this year -- talk to other people, hear other ideas, try new things. I love being exposed to things I haven't been exposed to before -- I'm not a believer not because I don't want to believe, but because I'm very hard to convince. Try to convince me. Anyway. Finding other posts made me think that maybe other people are as excited as I am, and blogsearching to see what they can find! So, I'm putting out a call -- if you are going to Sirius Rising at Brushwood in Sherman, NY, post a comment and say hi. I'm a 20-something fiddler and singer who likes few things better then reading, cooking and making music in the woods. We always camp back in the woods on the other side of the hill...a bit of a hike, I know, but we love company. And there's usually something good to eat or drink.
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May 2008 |
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