#13 Watch AFI 100 Top Movies

I'm watching Modern Times. I am so used to stitching while I watch a movie, but I can't with this, because it's mostly silent. I feel like I'm wasting so much time! Fortunately, they are walking off into the sunset right now. "Buck up"--that's the best they can do? At any rate, I learned where Dick Van Dyke got the idea for tripping over the ottoman and where quarterbacks got the idea for writing plays on their wrist guards. Nevertheless, this felt more like penance than anything else. But then it only came in at #81.

#95 Buy a new front door

Our new front door goes in today. The guy who's putting it in called last night to give us the head's up because he's also bringing over the quarter round that we'll have to paint tonight. So this morning he calls and says, "Where are the locks?" Um...locks? Doesn't that come with the door? Why didn't he tell me this yesterday, when I could have used the information? D'oh. Instead, I am standing in 69th Street Station freaking out about what to do about locks. Fortunately, the dude came up with a plan that didn't involve me taking off the whole day. I went online, found this, and told him to get me something like it. Brushed nickle first, black second. Do not get brass. Spend under $200. Not ideal, but we'll have a new door when we get home tonight! Screen door goes in tomorrow. No more stupid Amish buggies. (We're more than an hour from Lancaster, for goodness sake!)

#89 Shelving for dining room

Okay, so it doesn't look much like shelving, but it does take up much of that wall--we decided we didn't really need to add the storage the shelves would provide. (It was that ubiquitous Pottery Barn hanging bar sort of thing. Very chichi, too expensive.)

This is much more us anyway.

And, just because I can, a gratuitous shot of the $60 chandelier I got from Home Decorator's Outlet.

#14 Honey, Don't

Fiction: 7

#14 Read 16 Works of Fiction

Jennifer Government
By Max Barry

In this post-punk dystopia, corporations literally rule the world which has shriveled in size to three markets: USA (“free market”) countries, non-US economic blocs, and fragmented (ie emerging and hostile) markets. This book takes the reasoning of free trade to a logical but horrifying conclusion: a world where kids attend school funded by Mattel and learn about Barbie releases; where employers names their employees; where identity is supplanted by consumer goods.

I enjoyed this book. I thought it was a pointed critique of cultural and economic dominance of the US. Critics seemed to dislike the “one dimensional characters” but I think it adds to the atmosphere—where people are judged by their things, how on earth can we expect depth? Others complained about the choppiness, but clearly they didn’t see the sort of ad campaign vibe the author was creating.

Oddly, John Nike—the boss John Nike, not his underling John Nike—totally reminded me of this Wharton asshat I dated in college. I wish Jennifer Government had shot him.

Fiction: 6

Not On the List

This is how I spent my Sunday:


The dude and I put up the map in the study. And we did it without any arguments or fights. It came in eight parts, and we had to line up all the parts, so that was downright miraculous. The first photo shows the suede paint we did a few months ago. This room is really shaping up!

#78 Floored!

Here's the new floor. Clean. Pretty black and white. And did I mention clean? Slowly but surely, the kitchen is being turned into a room we want to have.

The dude took this picture on Sunday, but we're still working on putting things away--we've had to clean everything in the cabinets because of the dust that was raised in the making of this new kitchen.

#14 Read 16 works of fiction

Well, I found a mystery recommended by Nancy Pearl. (She recommends quite a few actually.) I have always enjoyed the A&E (Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton) Nero Wolfe, so it's about time I read the originals. Of course, it's very difficult to imagine anyone but Chaykin as Wolfe and Hutton as Archie, but I enjoyed reading it. Now I only have 72 more in the series. (I'm a huge fan of serial mysteries!)

Fiction: 5

More reading

Part of my dissertation examined the work of Margaret Atwood. She published this book after I completed that project, just when I had given up reading--taking a sort of well-deserved rest. I've read all the rest of her novels, and I usually quite enjoy them, so I wanted to complete the task she has set. And now I find out about the Penelopiad. Nevertheless...

I didn't enjoy Oryx and Crake as much as her other dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale. But O&C did make me think about something--in the end, when you have no need for language, what bits and pieces will be caught in your head? What stories will you remember how to tell? What words will keep you company? Me, I'll probably remember totally useless things about cooking with an oven and all the episodes of Seinfeld and The Simpsons.


I know I said the rest of the books had to be recommended in Nancy Pearl's Book Lust books, but I broke the rule already. I read A History of the African-American People [Proposed] by Strom Thurmond. I know Jim Kincaid, and I wanted to read it. It was funny, but the scary crazy character who proposed the book reminded me of my old boss, so there was a lot of dis-ease as I read. Some laughter. How come there aren't as many good satires as there ought to be? We all love Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert so why don't we have those types of voices on paper? Writers? Get to work!

Fiction: 4 down

Reading

I have read a couple of mysteries, and I think I've said this before: I don't know if I should count them toward my quota of fiction. They are fiction, but it takes me so much less time and brainpower to read mysteries than to read more highbrow stuff. I read Deadhead, a Dalziel and Pascoe mystery by Reginald Hill and Mrs. Malory and Death in Practice by Hazel Holt. I am also reading Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake; I'll probably finish that tonight, unless I decide to work on some crafts. Maybe I should make some sort of random qualification about what counts toward the fiction list, like the book has to be recommended in Book Lust. I hereby amend the list.

I also finished Mother Tongue from the Bryson list. It's very similar to Made in America, except there's more information on British English and English-around-the-world. It was okay. I have started looking for the other books, and even though I've checked several university libraries, I can't find Palace Under the Alps. I'm not buying it for $60 off amazon.

Well, there are some disorganized thoughts for you. The kitchen floor will be ready Monday. Big excitement!

Say Goodbye to My Ugly Floor

#78 Replace kitchen floor

Two weeks ago we popped into a local tile store, met a salesman when we were halfway in, and practically had the tile bought by the time we hit the back of the store--a very tiny store. But I knew what I wanted and there's no sense in hemming and hawing once they show you what there is. I could have gone all over hell and highwater searching for other things, but why?

Today, our contractor comes to take up the old lino. See how dirty it is? I have been on my hands and knees cleaning that floor. Nothing in the world was going to erase the years of ground in dirt.

To facilitate this job, we had to pull up the carpet in the hallway--we want him to be able to put in a nice marble threshhold. The hardwood threshhold is pretty beat up, so better to have him cover it, than have to deal with it later. So we are one room away from having the carpet pulled up in the whole downstairs (#76).

And we've placed an order for a new door (#95)! It should be up next week.

#28 Meet up with blogging stitching friends

Cathy invited some of us 'round to stitch; Jenna was there, and my new best friend, Karen. Karen asked me, if I was still in my 20s when I told her I wasn't in my 30s, and exclaimed that she was always the oldest when Cathy had people over. Heehee! What a delightful woman. Of course, she is sleep deprived, so maybe her vision is compromised. More here.

#16 Read the Bill Bryson oeuvre

I had never heard of Bill Bryson when the dude's bro sent him two books for Christmas in the mid-to-late-90s: Made in America and Notes from a Small Island. One evening, during my second year-long bout of hives, after the books had rested comfortably on our shelves for a few years, I climbed into the tub with the linguistic history, which had been conveniently located near the study door. I was enraptured. I read it quickly--as you can because, while interesting, the substance is fairly easy--and then picked up Small Island. Like me, Bryson is an American married to a Brit. Like me he finds the country at once familiar and completely incomprehensible. Unlike me, he actually dares to live there. (Oddly enough, he's ended up in the dude's hometown of Durham.)

When I had time, I continued to read Bryson's work, laughing hysterically at his attempt to negotiate the Appalachain Trail (which I used to want to walk when I was a kid) and admiring the haphazard nature of scientific discovery in the part of A Short History I managed to read; apparently it wasn't short enough. But then I stopped reading. Reading on my commute makes me nauseous.

This is the background to putting reading Bryson's work to my list of things to do. And since I went to the library last week and picked up I'm a Stranger Here Myself, Lost Continent, and In a Sunburned Country, I have been reading them.

I really enjoyed Sunburned Country, but first I had to have a crisis of confidence while reading Lost Continent, which I finished on Tuesday, but haven't had time to write about. I took lots of notes, scrupulously, and I will write those up eventually. But I loved Sunburned Country not because I thought it told me all I need it know about Australia, but because it told me anything at all about Australia. The dude and I were trying to think of things we knew about Australia and what we came up with was this: Greg Norman, Crocodile Dundee, and the Crocodile Hunter--the last two made a living selling Australia to Americans, so we're not prepared to go by them. Oh, and Evonne Goolagong. And Bryson's central thesis that we know nothing about Australia is true. We're very bad for neglecting it.

I liked the section about stromatolites best. It reminded me of a trip I had taken to Death Valley and the fascination with which we watched Cyprinodon salinus salinus, Death Valley Pupfish, a fish whose survival is incredibly unlikely. I recognized Bryson's attempt to explain to the American tourist what was so fascinating about stromatolites, as I have often had these conversations with my family. Recently, I was telling Sissy and my cousin about our planned trip to Montana, where we will see unusual things in nature, and was met with much the same response.

Because I haven't written a sublist in a while, here's one--the books in Bryson's oeuvre with the ones I have read marked:

1. The Palace Under the Alps (1985)
2. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)
3. The Mother Tongue (1990)
4. Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)
5. Made in America (1994)
6. Notes from a Small Island (1995)
7. A Walk in the Woods (1998)
8. I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1998)
9. In a Sunburned Country (2000)
10. Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words (2002)
11. Bill Bryson’s African Diary (2002)
12. A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)
13. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (2006)

#2 Get a Library Card

Today was such a lovely day. If I could walk, I would have insisted on going on a hike. Instead, we went for a drive, and while we were out, we went looking for the library. And found it. We got our library cards and took out some books. In fact, I'm two pages from completing my first book, Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself. I've been laughing like a deranged idiot. There was one article that nearly provoked an asthma attack; as I neared the end of the book, I tried to find that earlier article and couldn't. I couldn't even remember what it was about. So I guess the joys of the book are fleeting. But there's nothing like getting a good laugh every now and then. I have The Lost Continent and In A Sunburned Country, so I look forward to more Albuterol highs in the coming days.

And I Thought I was Making a Christmas Present

I was reviewing my to-do list, and I saw that I had listed "finish two FUFOs as flatfolds." This, of course, means nothing to you unless you're a stitcher. (Translation: finish two objects I have completed the stitching on as a stand up piece.) One of the projects I had planned to finish this way was Mill Hill's Renaissance Angel. Those who know me as Stitchbitch know that at the last minute, I decided to finish this as a gift for my aunt. And here it is in all its splendor:

Lunch with somebody new

Two of my coworkers sat a table over from me today so it was pretty necessary to have lunch with them. I had lunch with one of the young girls I never would have had lunch with normally. She seems sweet even if she has a penchant for musicals [nose wrinkle]. Oh, I'm such a snob.

So here's where we stand: BC, BE, CM, DM, DG, HB, FR, JH, JR, KM, KW, KB, LA, LN, LM, MG, MK, MG, NL, NS, PH, PM, PN, SS, SS, TM. People keep leaving so the attrition isn't entirely due to my "efforts"--and really, what efforts have I made? I keep getting dragged into these things...

#57 Holiday Comfort Lunch

On Wednesday, the boss took the team for Christmas lunch, and included our AA, NB, with whom I've never lunched. We went to Jones where the others guilted me into getting a sandwich. I had the tuna melt which was very good and talked the others into campfire craving for dessert. No one was dissatisfied; that dessert rocked.

More Wreaths, #48

Here it is the cheapest wreath yet! $2 for the form and $2 for the small metallic boxes. (I didn't use all of them.) The bows are either recycled or ribbon I had on hand, and the paper is what I am wrapping with this season, so I'm calling it a wash. The boxes are out of the recycling bin. They look a whole lot better on the door than they do piled by the curb!

Actually, the cheapest wreath is hanging on the lamppost, but since it's not a door wreath, I'm not counting it toward my goal. That one was $2.69 for the faux evergreen and $1 for the poinsettia stem. It looks perfect, and I avoided having to make a bow. You're going to sense a theme there...

I also wrote to my grandmothers last month. Oh, she's a goody two shoes.

#14 Read 16 Works of Fiction

1. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby. I don't think this book is quite as bad as people on Amazon are making out to be. It's probably not Hornby's best, but I really liked the idea of it. I kept thinking of that Chris Rock bit where he says you haven't been in love if you haven't planned your spouse's death...if you haven't brought the rat poison...if you haven't bought the rug to roll up the dead body in. I think if you don't like that joke, you won't get this book. I think so many people have thought about their spouse changing--not in truly substantial ways, but what would happen if, say, your husband started cleaning? It sounds good but we haven't thought it through to it's logical conclusion. I do believe this book reaches the logical conclusion, even if there's not that much logic sometimes. Anyway, it made me want to read more Hornby.

2. Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich I read this in one go to take my mind off the pain (I just had bunion surgery). It's funny, but I just had the feeling that I was missing too much because I hadn't read the first book. I think there might be more of a character sketch in that book. As a series lover, I enjoy not having to read those few paragraphs where the characters are set up so that people who don't read the series can catch on. Selfish. Evanovich is a funny one so it wasn't just the percoset that made me laugh out loud while I read this one. It was a light bit of fluff, and I do think I meant books not like this when I set out to read 16 works of fiction.