The "Big Read" list

Stolen from Yumi's blog - (oh, and by the way I'm over yesterday's upset, don't worry, all is well again).

Books I've read are in bold (52/100).
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
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
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
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (duplicate of #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 (that's a lot of solitude...)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd
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 Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's 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
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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Squished like a bug

My brilliant idea for the betterment of the company and my own position was turned down flat. Status quo is the way to go, apparently. I should feel appreciated that I am needed for my current task-set, but actually I feel more like no one else has time to do the shit-work I do, nor are they interested in trying to make the change. And further, my boss is annoyed at me.

Damn damn damn.

Nerves...

I have a meeting tomorrow morning with my boss, another department head, and a divisional VP about restructuring my job to eliminate (most) of the stuff I don't like and add in some stuff I will (mostly) like. It will be good for me, it will be good for the company, but it will make my current boss very unhappy and they may just say "NO" outright. I am a bundle of nerves right now...

R.I.P. George

I won't post dates or photos or pithy quotes, but just wanted to say that I'm very very sad about the death of George Carlin.

Revised - if you can't say anything nice...

Ok, so earlier this morning I posted about how I felt crappy and sore and whinge whinge whinge. Then I had a whinge-y, largely unproductive morning. Cause and effect. Post DELETED.

SNAP OUT OF IT! I have a well-paying job, a wonderful husband (who also has a well-paying job), a roof over my head, 2 loving (if moderately insane) cats, family and friends who love me and are loved by me, enough to eat, more books than I could read in a year if I had nothing else to do, and enough yarn to knit for another year if I had nothing else to do. There's even a few bucks a week for treats and little surprises here and there, and literally HOURS of leisure time to be as productive (or not) as I see fit. What the heck do I have to complain about?

Anything that I don't love about my life, it is up to me to make it change [1]. Pretending otherwise is a load of hooey. See this? It's my butt. See this? It's my own foot, kicking my own butt.

Ok, pep-talk over. I started knitting the Adagio Shawl (for Carole) last night - twice. Think I misred the pattern somewhat, so will try again this evening. I'm making it in Brett "Marble", which I think is going to be very pretty as it works up into gently-shaded stripes. Had a brief but fun visit at the Bridgehead SnB with the gals, including off-loading some what was I thinking? stash and acquiring some pretty new stash from the traveling stash bag - huzzah for free yarn!

Found out from Peter this morning that our Saturday plans are cancelled but new ones may be in the works - in the meantime, I think I am going to spend a chunk of Saturday morning on some domestic-bliss stuff. I haven't baked in ages, the living-room needs a tidy up, and I emptied my trunk into the porch last weekend to make room for golf bags. I figure a good solid hour of housework, then a couple hours of knitting before lunch, and leave the afternoon/evening open to "whatever".

Tomorrow, Miss Mok goes to the vet for her shots; I can't believe how big she's getting already! Such an affectionate little squirt she is, still working on the "no, we don't eat yarn" rule but she's learning a little every day. I think we are, too.

See, now I'm happy again. Blessings counted, coffee sipped, time to get back to some file management. How's your day?

[1] With the one small exception that my husband snores. Can't do anything about that!

Mid-year resolutions

Last night I was reading a wonderful article by the late Douglas Adams ("it's a sort of threat, you see...") about New Year's Resolutions and why they invariably fail. His main point was that people tend to stick them on random pieces of paper which they promptly lose. I see this point, as it reinforced my own tendency to lose track of stuff unless it's written down, checked and double-checked in a systemic way. This is, I've discovered, WHY I am 80% effective (or better) at work but absolutely a pathetic disorganized mess at home. At work, I have my Outlook, and everything goes in there - tasks, appointments, daily reminders, etc. At home, we have a Year-At-a-Glance wall calendar and a whiteboard in the hall for grocery lists and random notes. Not a real solid system.

So, I am going back to Day-Timer land. I've waffled back and forth from computer to paper-based organizing systems over the past few years and I've decided that I really need to keep 2 separate, but synched, systems. (Say THAT five times fast, I dare you). So for work, I will keep the Outlook system. But on my desk and in my bag and always within reach I am going to start keeping my Day-Timer, for personal notes, and lists, and plans, and maybe even some writing. I want to get back to writing, and I want to spend more time on important things like fitness and keeping the house pleasant (not antiseptic, but welcoming) and family and friends and so on. This requires a plan. Step 1 is get the Day-Timer and Step 2 is start writing stuff in it. Step 3 will be working out how to best organize it, but I think that will evolve over time.

So, some Mid-Year Resolutions:

1. At least 1/2 hour of physical activity per day - gym/garden/walk/yoga/something.
2. Re-evaluate the knitting project list, and estimate time to complete projects. Build a schedule (with some flexibility).
3. More balanced leisure time activities - especially for the summer, get outside more.
4. Write every day, at least 15 minutes. (Blogging doesn't count for this).
5. Cook a healthy meal at least twice a week, and clean up the kitchen immediately afterwards.
6. Go visiting or have company over at least every other weekend.

I've got other ones too about figuring out future plans, career consulting, etc. but there's not a real sense of urgency to those just yet. For the summer, these six goals are enough. I'll track my progress (in my Day-Timer, aha!) and see how I did, come Labour Day weekend.

Staying cool with a blue hue

Or, I don't feel like working so I'm playing with my blog template. :D

Updated the Project List, it keeps growing and growing and I seem to be knitting less and less lately - oh dear! But there's lots of summer left, and Mok will eventually outgrow wanting to eat my yarn, so progress will happen.

This weekend will be busy - this afternoon is our company picnic (whee, softball), tomorrow is the company golf tournament (I'm taking Dad as a Father's Day treat - we should have fun and there are prizes and stuff), and then Sunday we're doing the "family thing" for Father's Day. I expect to be totally exhausted by Sunday night but ah well, it will be good to be active. I've been feeling like a lump lately.

Peter and I have been talking about our holidays in August - we may do some location scouting for a possible change-of-lifestyle move sometime in the next couple of years. We keep kicking around a bunch of ideas but haven't really nailed anything concrete down as yet. I think it's going to be a case of finding a *place* we absolutely love, and building our life around that. Not that we don't love Ottawa, but we're both small-town people at heart and need to figure out what we really want our life to be.

But - deep thoughts for later - it's almost time to pack up for the picnic and then the weekend begins! Hope yours is great.

If I had a million dollars...

(Or another day of stupidity in the office) I'd go be a light-house keeper in British Columbia. Doesn't that sound lovely? Loads of knitting time, I'd bet...

Memo to summer:

The only time I want 100% humidity is in the shower.

Do you know what day it is?

It's June 6th, and this past Tuesday was a new moon, so it's... Convoy Day! (check the link for the lyrics)

http://www.narrowgauge.org/4x4/cw_pages/lyrics/spirit/convoy.html

And guess what I got my darlin' hubby truck-driver to celebrate? Convoy on DVD! Woot! Trucks for him, Kristofferson in a muscle-shirt for me. Oh yeah!

Yeah baby!

And more on movies!

Yeah, just finished a movie post on my blog and then found this on Yumi's:

One movie that made you laugh: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

One movie that made you cry: Truly, Madly, Deeply

One movie that you loved when you were a child: The Sound of Music

One movie that you've seen more than once: The Commitments

One movie you loved but were embarrassed to admit it: The Land Before Time (I flied? No, you falled...)

One movie that you hated: um... hrm. I can't think of any.

One movie that scared you: Silence of the Lambs

One movie that bored you: The Quick and The Dead

One movie that bored you but everyone loves and you don’t see why: Lord of the Rings (sorry!)

One movie that made you miserable: again, can't think of any.

One movie that you weren't brave enough to see: The Exorcist

One movie character that you've fallen in love with: Just one? Silent Bob.

Last movie you saw: The Mission

Next movie you hope to see: National Treasure 2

Your favorite movie: Tombstone

It's alive!

Yes, I'm feeling better today, thank you. Soup and sleep (aka rest and fluids) is the best prescription in the world - though of course adding some Tylenol to zap the fever was necessary! Went to bed at 7 last night and slept like a rock, feeling fine this morning other than a slight achiness, but I think that's mostly inactivity - I haven't been to the gym in forever.

I need to upload kitty and knitting pictures but I'm posting from work, so instead I will give you some movie reviews! Recent stuff we've watched, and what I thought of it, just for a change of pace...with knit-ability notes, of course! ***SPOILERS***

Hot Fuzz: From the "Shaun of the Dead" guys, if you liked SotD you'll like this one - lower gore level, slightly smarter jokes, and lots of the same types of setups. A fun little twist towards the end made for a nice surprise. Not good for detail knitting, as lots of the fun is visual so you need to pay attention to the screen.

Sense and Sensibility: Yes, it's taken me over a decade to get around to seeing this - and honestly, I probably wouldn't have except I heard that Hugh Laurie was in it. Turns out Alan Rickman is also in it - woot! Lovely film, lots of pastoral scenery and sharp, really REALLY good dialogue, which (in my opinion) elevates it above the normal tragedy-with-a-happy-ending. Great knitting film, as I only needed to look up when Alan Rickman or Hugh Laurie were on screen. Got most of a leg of sock done.

The Mission: Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, and a very-much underused Liam Neeson trying to save "new world indians" from the combined forces of the Catholic Church, Spain and Portugal. You know they don't, you know that going in, but you still hope and hope... Gorgeous scenery, very understated performances by Irons and De Niro. Sad, sad movie. Lots of knitting, as most is dialogue and the battle scenes are pretty gruesome.

We Are Marshall: As I said to the family, "Football for dad, sad story for mom." This delivered both in spades - a real tear-jerker and bone-cruncher in one movie. I particularly liked the way the plane crash was handled at the beginning of the film - because really, the movie's about what happens AFTER, and it was well done that way. Not a lot of knitting, because this one calls for close attention to facial/body language and the football was edge-of-your-seat stuff.

The Number 23: Ok, this was equal parts cheezy conspiracy crap and creepy pyscho-manipulation crap - but still watchable and actually kind of enjoyable, if you can just get beyond the sheer coincidence levels. Convincing performances by Jim Carrey and Virginia Madsen (I like her anyway, don't see enough movies with her) - pretty good knitting flick, most things can be listened to rather than watched closely.

And... that's lunch! Back to work time. Have a good day!

A *slight* case of plague...

Yesterday dawned fresh and crisp and I greeted the day well-rested and full of enthusiasm. Met Carol for breakfast as usual, got some work done, met the new co-worker (Virginia, who shows every sign of being a fabulous addition to our team), and then somewhere just before lunch - blargh. Fever. Chills. Dizzy spells. Muscle aches. Oh good LORD what the hell is going on with me? Home again home again, to curl up under a blanket and be brought eggs and tea by my hubby, and cuddled by the cats. Early to bed, skipping the Detroit/Pittsburgh game.

5 a.m. Alarm goes off. I rise, feeling like I have a MILLION blankets on me when in fact there are none. Bathroom, thermometer, temp of 102 degrees. Oh good LORD what is going on? Dizzy as hell, phone the office and back to bed after a glass of juice and some Tylenol. Slept to 11 a.m., temp down to 99 degrees. Better. More juice, Tylenol and couch time. Knit a big chunk of Peter's new sock. Watched "The Mission" with Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro (depressing movie).

Now it's almost a quarter to seven and I am TOTALLY wiped out - I had a sandwich and lots more juice and even a half-mug of half-caf coffee to prevent the caffeine withdrawl headache. One more dose of juice and Tylenol and I am going back to bed with my hubby and my kitties (did I mention the girls are getting along ok now? As long as Mok doesn't steal Squeeky's treats, they're happy to be sharing space now). And tomorrow, I will go to work. And if this crap happens again, I'm calling the doctor, because mysterious high fevers with no other apparent symptoms are scary- especially if you watch "House" (which we do). On the plus side, I'm pretty sure it's not lupus.

PSA - It's a Girl!

Yes, apparently we were misled as to the gender of our beloved little Mok - she is without question a GIRL kitty, not a boy kitty. Peter had her napping on his lap Friday night, looked down at the fuzzy little belly and pointed out that the equipment was not correct for a boy kitty. Oops! Ah well, we love her anyway, and now she and Squeeky are starting to get along better too.

Busy weekend, full report later (I need to take pictures and put up links and stuff). Happy Monday all!