| New Years and Lenten Resolutions |
[Mar. 21st, 2009|12:47 pm] |
I usually make a New Years resolution, but with my ankle injury I decided to skip it this year (I guess my resolution is to get better).
But I am willing to take on something for Lent. This year I've given up red meat. So I've been eating alot of poultry and fish for the past few weeks. It's been easier than I thought it would be. The hardest thing is eating out -- I don't think I had been aware of how many restaurant dishes include bacon. I'm also doing some spiritual reading every day, which I'm pleased to report I'm keeping up with. Show Me the Way: Daily Lenten Readings by Henri Nouwen is a collection of daily scripture, prayer, and meditation from one of my favorite authors. It's only a few pages a day so it doesn't take that long, but each day has been thought-provoking and interesting. |
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| PT |
[Mar. 21st, 2009|12:32 pm] |
I've been in physical therapy (PT) for my torn tibial tendon (ankle) for a while now, and I'm slowly continuing to improve. As I get better, we step up the intensity of what I do in PT. Most of the exercises make intuitive sense (walking on the treadmill, pushing on a weight machine with the balls of my feet, stretching). But some of the exercises make me wonder if they really help my ankle or if my therapist is having me do them for the amusement value they provide. For the past few weeks she's had me stand on a squishy balance beam, one foot in front of the other, while we play catch with a medicine ball. Yesterday, she increased the difficulty: now I stand on one foot on a squishy oval while we play catch. In fact, I question most of the standing-on-one-foot exercises -- I think my therapist just enjoys watching me flail around trying not to fall. ;-) |
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| recycling |
[Feb. 21st, 2009|11:17 am] |
I thought there were three kinds of recycling at my condo: glass/plastic/cans, corrugated cardboard, and newspapers. The paper recycling bins in my condo are clearly labeled as NEWSPAPER ONLY both in the trash rooms and in the big bins in the garage. Imagine my surprise to find out that NEWSPAPER ONLY really means mixed paper and cardboard of all kinds when I called the contractor who hauls away our recyclables to complain that we don't recycle regular paper. They're coming out next week to get us new labels.
The county has an initiative to get people more involved in recycling, and I signed on with them to be the new recycling coordinator for my condo. It's a one-year term. Even if the only thing I accomplish is getting the right labels on the recycling containers, it will be a big improvement. And I have all kinds of plans to put information about what can/can't be recycled on our condo website, in our newsletter, and maybe even a pamphlet/fridge-worthy handout if I can get past the idea that putting recycling instructions out in paper format is a bit counter-productive.
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| books |
[Dec. 9th, 2008|05:50 pm] |
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
http://www.amazon.com/Nine-Inside-Secret-World-Supreme/dp/1400096790/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228863059&sr=8-1
This is another Enigmaaa recommendation, so of course it's good. I used to do consulting work on the financial systems for the Federal Judiciary, so I've had an interest in the courts. I had not worked directly with the Supreme Court, so I didn't know much beyond the fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court heads up the group of judges who decided to modernize the financial systems. This book discusses the Supreme Court from both a judicial and a political perspective. It seems like it's trying to be non-judgmental regarding liberal vs conservative views, although it seemed a bit more sympathetic to the liberals. It was an interesting read. I particularly appreciated the explanations of the different judicial philosophies.
Shortly before I finished the book, I had the opportunity to hear Justice Scalia speak. He's an interesting speaker, and I understood much more of what he said having read the book than I would have before I started it. So overall, I recommend it as a worthwhile read if you're interested in learning a bit more about the current Supreme Court and what it means to you. |
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| books |
[Oct. 26th, 2008|04:39 pm] |
Blindfold Game by Dana Stabenow
Enigmaaa recommended this to me when I started a project with the Coast Guard. It's a thriller that takes place in part on a Coast Guard ship in Alaska. It's a quick, interesting read. I didn't like the more violent parts, but I enjoyed the descriptions of life aboard a Coast Guard ship. The author spent time on a ship to get a sense of life on board and I think she did a good job of conveying that in the novel.
The writing did not wow me, but it didn't bother me either. Overall I recommend the book. |
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| books |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|06:39 pm] |
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
I've had this book in my stack of "stuff to read" for a while, so I can't say the list of books from megastoat is what made me read it. Maybe it was the push I needed though. I've had so many people recommend this book to me, that I had almost reached the point where I wanted to dig in my heels and stubbornly refuse to go along with the crowd. I'm glad I didn't because I enjoyed the book.
It's literature meets Sci Fi, but much heavier on the literature. If you're coming at the novel from a Sci Fi perspective, you'll probably be disappointed. The time travel aspect is simply a way to explore human relationships. This is, I think, the first story I've encountered that used time travel as a device where the point was not to change some aspect of time (history or the future).
The characters have depth and the story is compelling. I recommend it. |
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| books |
[Jul. 6th, 2008|09:44 am] |
By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle
This is by the woman who wrote the Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, which I loved. This stand-alone book is quite good too (not as good as the Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, but that was a tough act to follow). It's a kid's book and it's an unusual take on a familiar legend.
I recommend it, but don't read it too late at night if you're easily spooked. |
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| books |
[Jul. 5th, 2008|11:39 am] |
Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card
This is an unusual time travel book in that none of the times visited was our own. You have people from a distant future traveling back to the past, specifically to the time of Christopher Columbus.
I really enjoyed this book. You do need to have a willingness to put up with the premise that Columbus' discovery of America is the pivotal event that leads directly to global warming and the devastation of the Earth. But if you can get past that, the book has an interesting storyline, compelling characters, and an interesting take on how history works.
I also like the premise that sometime in the future we discover a way to view past events. History can be known with far greater accuracy than we now have.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. |
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| meme from megastoat |
[Jun. 27th, 2008|04:18 pm] |
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1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE. 3a) Strikethrough the books you HATE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.
I've read more than half, which is better than I thought I would do.
1 Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I’m halfway through one of those “read The Bible in a year” editions so I bolded half and italicized the other half)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (started out OK but got worse and worse until I was completely offended at the end)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I’ve read the vast majority so I’m counting this)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier(I had this in my hand at the bookstore a few weeks ago, but I bought Dracula instead – another good read)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (never even heard of this)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I got so sick of the phony thing)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (can I double underline?)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (strange that they double-count this; see item 33)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (this was another one of those fun Victorian mysteries that I enjoy)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (saw the movie; does that count?)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (another one being double-counted)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I have the musical practically memorized; does that count?) |
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| books |
[Jun. 15th, 2008|06:39 pm] |
Dracula by Bram Stoker
In my continuing quest to read everything on the Local Schools Summer Reading List table at the bookstore, I picked up Dracula. You know, I really enjoy Victorian English literature. I don't think I've read anything from that time period that I didn't like. Of course, only the best works from that time are still in print.
Dracula wasn't exactly what I expected. Never once did the Count announced that he's "come to suck your blood!" The story is told through letters and diaries of the various characters, so you get several perspectives on the story. It's a long book but it moves quickly. I got a big kick out of the most interesting female character (I think you could say she was the heroine) being so good at stenography and typing that she gets all of their notes in order. The story spends quite a bit of time on mundane details such as compiling notes into a time line and tracking down the shipment of various boxes, which I think have been skipped in most of the movie adaptations. But I thought it moved along nicely and I enjoyed it. I recommend it. |
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| books |
[Jun. 15th, 2008|06:21 pm] |
Startide Rising (The Uplift Saga, Book 2) by David Brin
and
Sundiver (The Uplift Saga, Book 1) by David Brin
I started with Book 3 in this series (reviewed earlier). You really can start anywhere. It's a fascinating universe where dolphins and chimps have been "uplifted" so that they are able to communicate and work side-by-side with mankind. It's very interesting to imagine what it would be like to work with a dolphin -- in the book they all enjoy making up ribald poetry.
I recommend the whole series and look forward to reading more by the author. |
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| books |
[May. 30th, 2008|10:12 pm] |
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive ... and the rest of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series
The latest paperback in the series (it's Metro reading, so I don't get the hardcover books, which leaves me perpetually one book in the series behind the rest the of the world) is just as good as the others. And I should know, since I started back at the beginning with book 1 and worked my way up to it (eight books in all). I loved it. |
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| books |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|09:13 am] |
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
This is a fairy tale for grownups. It has all of the traditional elements of a boy-seeks-to-prove-his-worthiness-to-his-true-love children's adventure story. It has a magical land of faerie, a quest for a fallen star, witches, castles, and strange creatures. But I say it's for grownups because it also has sex and some cursing (cussing of the four-letter word variety -- most fairy tales involve some sort of curse).
On the topic of cursing, this story uses swear words tastefully, sparingly, and for the benefit of the story. There are no gratuitous words in this book.
I enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it for anyone who likes escapist reading. It's going on the shelf with the books that I read over and over again. |
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| books |
[Mar. 3rd, 2008|12:58 pm] |
Grendel by John Gardner
This is the story of Beowulf told from the monster's point of view. I found myself taking mental notes for the paper comparing and contrasting the two worldviews as expressed by the two books. It's an interesting premise and a well-written book. This book starts off earlier than Beowulf, so you get more of the history of Hrothgar and the Scyldings. You learn more about Grendel, who appears as a one-dimensional character in Beowulf but narrates Grendel to reveal motivation and personality. As Beowulf ends with the death of the hero, so this book ends with the death of the monster.
I recommend it, but not enthusiastically. If you're into comparative literature, it's fun. If not, skip it. |
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| books |
[Feb. 22nd, 2008|09:14 pm] |
Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
I had heard that this translation (it came out around 2000) was very readable and good, so I finally read it. It is much more readable than I remember from reading it in high school. The story is interesting and entertaining. It's a classic and a fun read. The thing I love the most about the book is the language. It's both simple and complex. Here's a stanza from the first page:
There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes,
a wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on
as his powers waxed and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts
beyond the whale-road had to yield to him
and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.
I love the juxtaposition of "That was one good king" with words like scourge, wrecker, rampage, and terror.
The other thing you should know about Beowulf is that it's a guy magnet. I carried this book around for just a few days, and had three different guys approach me conversationally. I may continue to carry it around for a while even though I've finished it. :-) |
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| Resolutions |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|11:45 pm] |
I never did post my New Year's resolution this year. Last year's resolution to make the bed on a daily basis was a resounding success. I now have an excellent habit that is built into my morning routine and that I plan to continue indefinitely. It's nice to come home from work and see the bed all made up -- it makes me feel virtuous.
So this year I'm tackling my nighttime routine and I've resolved to do a better job of it. That means not skipping steps: I have to take the time to do a full face-care routine, remember to fill/clean the humidifier, put lotion on my feet, put drops in my eyes, etc. So far I'm doing OK. It's not a full habit yet, but it's coming along.
Usually Lent gets here later and I've had time to adjust to my New Year's resolution before I have to cope with a Lenten sacrifice. But this year Lent is early. I like to do two things, one a sacrifice (giving something up) and the other an extra (doing something good). For the extra, I've decided to incorporate more spiritual reading and prayer into my life, and in particular to make time for the daily reading in a book of Lenten reflections. To make time for that, I've given up the newspaper and the online comics (with the exception of the comics I link to on my LJ friends page, which are either just one panel or else not every day -- that's not where I spend the bulk of my online comics reading time). Wish me luck! |
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| books |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|11:26 pm] |
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
I think everyone knows the premise of this book. Other than that, I knew nothing about it. It's a very short book and a quick read. I expected more action, but the book really is about an idea. If you didn't know the story going into it (and stop here if you don't!), you might be taken by surprise that Jekyll and Hyde are the same man.
I found it thoroughly enjoyable and recommend it. |
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