things you think are boring but they are not

the weather. mostly just the weather.

we brush it off as an inane conversation filler. but really, i think it is more like a religious devotion. and much like religion, it is an effort to decode life, the unpredictability and vagaries, the surprises and complications.

i think that is why we marvel and refuse to accept.
"can you believe it is so warm? for november?"
"it's not going to rain for the next four days. no way. i refuse to believe it."
"it can;t be winter - summer just got here!"

i know there are people in the camp that loves all weather, and is excited about all of it. i might argue that this is just a form of blind worship of an unpredictable god. might as well sit back and enjoy the ride, 'cause there is nothing else you can do.

and of course, there are those that don;t want to hear about the weather, because there is nothing you can do about it. just leave it be. talking about the inevitable and uncontrollable is boring. atheism? agnostic?

me, i am firmly in the talk-about-it-extensively and examine-it-all-the-time person. i should go to seminary school for weather nerds.

(by the way - isn't the weather crazy right now?)

Empty Bowls

My favorite charity event was this past weekend: Empty Bowls. How can you not love a charity event where your donation gets you a beautiful, handmade bowl and yummy, handmade (?) soup.

These are the two we picked out: These are also the two my Dad would be proud of. Although even they are a little 'fancy' the one with it's shiny black glaze on the bottom, the other with the fancy little swirl on the inside. I love bowls. I get so very

excited when I see all the bowls, can barely contain myself! I just simply marvel at all the quirky little creations.

And of course my obsession leads to excess donations to charity, in the form of additional purchases of bowls. These my Dad will consider a little to precious, to which I say: Hey! At least I know they made little transfers for those precious little drawings which somehow redeems the fact that I Love Them. I LoveLoveLove them and will eat all of my meals out of them.

Oh, and the soup was good, too.

Self Indulgence of the Literary Kind

I love books. I love reading. I love books so much that I love reading reviews of books. But, I have this problem...I rarely really remember what I read. Sucks, no? And I read way too much way too early, and didn't really get it. Kudos to the parents for having skads of lovely things to read. No kudos to me for trying to read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" when I was 10. Sure, I read all the words, and understood maybe the 'ands' and 'thens' - but that's it.

Now, here is the big dilemma. Do I go back and re-read all the things I have read and did not retain? Or focus on the millions of excellent things I have not?

This list makes me feel stupid and hopeful ; all the books I have read are bolded. Doesn't mean I retained a damn thing, but I have looked at every word between the covers. But, there are a few I remember. Mostly modern books...I feel like I should reread some classics? Geez.

(photo courtesy of elearningstuff.wordpress.com)
"106 books of pretension" at
What Would Jane Austen Do?

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2. Anna Karenina
3. Crime and Punishment
4. Catch-22
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude
6. Wuthering Heights
7. The Silmarillion
8. Life of Pi
9. The Name of the Rose
10. Don Quixote
11. Moby Dick
12. Ulysses
13. Madame Bovary
14. The Odyssey
15. Pride and Prejudice
16. Jane Eyre
17. The Tale of Two Cities
18. The Brothers Karamazov
19. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
20. War and Peace
21. Vanity Fair
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife (okay - this i remember, and love)
23. The Iliad
24. Emma
25. The Blind Assassin
26. The Kite Runner
27. Mrs. Dalloway
28. Great Expectations (and i remember this one, but hated it)
29. American Gods
30. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (this one was great)
31. Atlas Shrugged (okay, I love Ayn Rand)
32. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
33. Memoirs of a Geisha
34. Middlesex
35. Quicksilver
36. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
37. The Canterbury Tales (in high school, for class - does that count?)
38. The Historian : a novel
39. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
40. Love in the Time of Cholera (yeah, not real impressed with Mr Marquez...)
41. Brave New World
42. The Fountainhead
43. Foucault’s Pendulum
44. Middlemarch
45. Frankenstein
46. The Count of Monte Cristo
47. Dracula
48. A Clockwork Orange (i have an excuse; tried to watch and then read after having wisdom teeth extracted - heavily medicated, barely remember anything)
49. Anansi Boys
50. The Once and Future King
51. The Grapes of Wrath
52. The Poisonwood Bible : a novel (this was excellent)
53. 1984 (love this one)
54. Angels & Demons
55. The Inferno (again in high school)
56. The Satanic Verses
57. Sense and Sensibility
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray
59. Mansfield Park
60. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
61. To the Lighthouse
62. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
63. Oliver Twist
64. Gulliver’s Travels
65. Les Misérables
66. The Corrections
67. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
68. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
69. Dune
70. The Prince
71. The Sound and the Fury
72. Angela’s Ashes : a memoir (college)
73. The God of Small Things (beautiful, beautiful, beautiful)
74. A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
75. Cryptonomicon
76. Neverwhere
77. A Confederacy of Dunces
78. A Short History of Nearly Everything
79. Dubliners
80. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (read it, liked it, still felt like I didn't get it) 81. Beloved
82. Slaughterhouse-Five
83. The Scarlet Letter
84. Eats, Shoots & Leaves
85. The Mists of Avalon
86. Oryx and Crake : a novel
87. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
88. Cloud Atlas
89. The Confusion
90. Lolita (read it for a women's studies class - totally different take - loved it)
91. Persuasion
92. Northanger Abbey
93. The Catcher in the Rye
94. On the Road (hate kerouac - Chris loves him, so maybe I'm missing something...)
95. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
96. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
97. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values (yup - there it is)
98. The Aeneid
99. Watership Down (i don't know which i love more about this book - the bunnies or the bunny-language dictionary in the back)
100. Gravity’s Rainbow
101. The Hobbit
102. In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
103. White Teeth (genius)
104. Treasure Island
105. David Copperfield
106. The Three Musketeers