Pick Me!

I spent 7 months in Austria in 1996. I believe that makes me uniquely qualified to be the Vice President of the United States. Oh, wait, someone has already been picked? AND she LIVES between two foreign countries? Oh, rats!!

Mentos and Diet Coke

Literary Sucker

I am an absolute sucker for these lists...

Bold the ones you've read, dash -- the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend to other people.

--The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes: a Memoir
Angels & Demons
*Anna Karenina
*Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
--The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
*Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
--The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
--Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
*The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
--The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
*Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
*Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
--The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
--The Scarlet Letter
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
*A Tale of Two Cities
*Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
*Watership Down
White Teeth
*Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into value

Something I noticed today...

that has nothing to do with adoption!

I haven't blogged here in so long, I don't know who will even read this... guess it doesn't matter...

OK, so I was on my way home and I noticed on the car next to me, that the gas plate thingy, because of it's location, had to have a crease put in it to match the body of the car.

I thought that was pretty stupid, and imagined the guy that designs the gas tank assembly being all EYE-ROLL "Look what they did again... can they not put the gas cap on the smooth part of the car?

Then I noticed that almost every car has that "feature" and I wondered how much $ it costs to have to do that, and how much $ it costs the consumer to have that.

Then I started thinking about IKEA, and how they should design cars, like they design their products... stackable, easily shippable. Dunno, it just kind of tickled me... IKEA cars. You heard it here first.

Blogging Here Now

Lee and I are blogging here now, in case you wondered where we went...

Rough Seas

We took the SS Badger from Manitowoc, WI to Ludington, MI this past weekend. It's about the 4th (?) time we've done it. My dad lives in Interlochen, and there's an annual "Sunday before Memorial Day Marek Get-together" at Don's in Mancelona. Don is my dad's cousin, which makes him what to me? Uncle Don?

Don is REALLY into antiques. Every item in his "cabin" has a story. Turns out he had a story of his own.... I'll tell you because it's really one of those miracle situations... He and a friend were driving back from an antique show in SC. They were on a highway in KY when his friend, who was driving, passed out. Don only had time to yank the steering wheel to keep them from hitting the concrete barrier. They flew off the highway, over and down a 65 foot hill. He thought, "This is it, I am going to die." They flew through saplings and glanced off a couple of larger trees. At the base of the hill were more saplings growing in front of a metal fence... those two things created a spring and a pretty soft landing. His next thought was "Holy S---, I'm still alive." His friend was alive, but groggy. Don was able to climb up out of the ravine and call for help. His friend possibly had low blood sugar... that's all they can think. Neither needed medical attention.

Had any one little bit of that story been different, it would have had a different outcome. Not to mention the fact that no one could see where they went off the road. Don is a changed man. He said things that made him uptight or worry before no longer do.

Anyway, I didn't mean to tangent like that, it's just such an amazing story.

Back to the Badger. The way over was fine and enjoyable as always. The ride home, however, we experienced rough waves the whole way. I used "Sea Bands" and ginger candy, and reclined in a darkened room almost the whole trip. Between those things, I was alright. I stocked up on the ginger candy for our upcoming trip. Lee slept the whole time. I heard a couple of kids tossing their cookies in the hallway. That sound! There were several adults that smiled ruefully as we all tried to pretend not to hear it.

Merging

I blogged here about my 1st foray into Ethiopian cooking.

Olives, Cherries and Eggs

What do these 3 things have in common?

All were hurled at my car while it was parked in front of our house. I had parked there because I got home late and Lee's car was in the way and I was lazy.

Lee's car has been egged, what, 2, 3 times? We usually don't park in the street for that reason.

What I don't get is the olives and the cherries. Was there a sale? Is this a new thing we're not cool enough to know? Those crazy kids... what they're into these days...

Lee gets extra props for cleaning my car late last night and moving his car and then moving my car, and then moving HIS car behind MY car. All without waking me up.

Don't P.O. the Llama!

Lee surprised me Saturday by taking me here.

Here's a highlight...

Helicopter Ears

You know, Sibbie, if you'd give me something other than Helicopter Ears, you wouldn't end up looking so peeved. Or is that your imperial disdain for humans?