Vacation!

Ah, vacation. J is on break between quarters and I've taken the short week off to be able to spend time with him. We spent the first two days running around, starting Christmas shopping (mostly for his family), catching up with friends. Today I hope to make further progress on some of the craft gifts I'm planning. And catch up a bit on to do's around the house.

A couple of books from a bit ago:

Book #17 (sigh, one of these years I'll get to 50. Doesn't look like I'll even hit 30 this year):
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. I loved this! At first you are struck by the differences in the bred-to-be-freaks that are the Binewski children. By the grotesqueness of the concept. I've had friends squirm as I start to describe the premise. Then you are pulled in. By Arturo's philosophy that "norms" and the beautiful are tormented and cannot fully reach their potential without becoming freaks themselves.

I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique. - Arturo Binewski

By the marked isolation of the Binewski's and its impact on their worldview and their ability to even consider functioning outside the Fabulon.

Our contact with norms outside the show was in dashes and flashes. Overheard phrases unconnected to lives. Outsiders weren't very real to me.

Overall, Dunn has a gift for wonderful turns of phrase and descriptions. The story is quite moving and holds your attention. I wasn't as happy with the end because I don't think it had to be that way and still question why.

Book #18: Rhapsody: Child of Blood by Elizabeth Haydon. This gets a big MEH. There are portions that are not very interesting or character forming that drag on and on and on. That said, threads came together enough towards the end that I did change my mind about reading at least the second in the trilogy, but will get it from the library and not pay for it.

Vacation week in review

I had a wonderful week off - a combo of catching up with the house, some last hoorahs for the summer with J, and birthday celebrations.

Organizing/ cleaning, Homearama, Dollop cupcakes, fights with the phone company over squirrel-chewed lines, 7-hours on a boat, dinner with family at Mom & Dad's, SouthWedge market and Napa pizza with friends, Inception, and a fossil hunt. Cool!

We splurged on a new, tall, wonderfully cushioning bed. It felt so grown up - our first new-to-us bed. Now I want to design the bedroom, paint, carpets, sconces and maybe a padded headboard. Shhhhh - don't tell J, I haven't yet. (I have some other house things I have to get done first this fall, but maybe winter...)

I read a bunch, but was reading 3 books at once, so didn't finish any, but getting close! ;-)

Book #12 Molvania: A land untouched by modern dentistry (Jet Lag travel guide) by Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, and Rob Sitch. Not really meant for the straight read-through I gave it, but fascinating in the level of detail they give to this compound joke.

I was overwhelmed by the birthday greetings I received on Twitter and Facebook. Friends from all phases of my life - virtual and IRL friends, close and not-so. Each wish made me smile on its own. Together, I was full of warm-fuzzies. Thank you all! >*sniff*< I love you so much! ;-)

Vacation and a couple more books

I've taken a few days off, part of J's spring break. He has some homework and I'm largely catching up on to dos and cleaning (or I mean to, anyway), but it's nice. Something about not being pushed by routine - being able to bust away and actually think about some stuff for a bit. I should do this more often...

Today we took a walk around the neighborhood, hitting a couple of our favorite shops- hung out with Wayne for a bit at Futons 'n More, stopped by the Genesee Bakery for some goodies and lunch. And before I dive into cleaning, I'll update you on the latest books:

Book #3 - Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The reason behind the rhyme by Chris Roberts. Chris is a librarian who runs historical tours around London. In detailing the origins of some of our most common nursery rhymes, he taught me a lot of the nuance and personality behind British history, place names, etc. Especially fascinating is the subject of rhyming slang where "Lady" means "fiver" because of Lady Godiva - it's a type of slang that makes you think to get it. I may have to search for more on this.

Book #4 - The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. I got this because I had never heard of caucasian-featured mummies in China before. There is a lot of information on the region (the Uyghur Autonomous Region) and puzzling out who these people were, how they lived, and how they got there from just what they wore into the grave. Anyone interested in the history of textiles or linguistics will find this quite interesting. My only gripe is that Barber seems to come to a conclusion - and then tell us again and again and again. By the end, I kind of wondered why it was still going.

Come and gone

Dan's birthday gathering was in the Thousand Islands. We stayed in a nice cottage on top of a big pile of rocks right on the river. Even though the weather wasn't spectacular all week, it was a great time. J made it up two days after the rest of us (because of a class), the guys got to spend an afternoon fishing for big 'uns, and we did an islands tour so we got to fantasize about having an island someday....



Sonny's run of trees sold out in < 1 minute. He's also sold some other large pieces recently. Awesome stuff.

I have a bunch of books to catch up on:
Book #8: Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot. I was pretty disappointed in this. I was hoping for book of case studies detailing what had been buried and why. I got a lot more really dry academic definitions of history and its composition. The moments when he detailed what little is known of some of the true events surrounding Haiti's revolution, it gets more bearable - but just not the really cool analysis I thought it would be.