Random Snapshots

august goals

As of August 10th I will be officially finished with school so I expect to have more free time for the last 3 weeks of August.  I'm ready to re-claim my life and get some stuff done.  In the words of Big Black, I'm going to DO WORK SON!

1.    Control my eating out and get to the gym more often:  I anticipate having more time at night to plan my meals throughout the day which will result in less eating out.  I'm giving myself 2 months to get back on track and shed a few lbs.

2.    Finish a knitting UFO:  This is ongoing for me.  I really need to begin finishing what I start.  I'm shooting for finishing the 2nd Lindsay sock and possibly my Hey Student! cardigan.

3.    Start a date-night tradition with Adam:  This has been on my mind a lot as school winds down.

4.    Get in the habit of tackling a small cleaning project in the house every week on a certain day:  For example -- Every Wednesday try and purge/organize a small portion of a room such as the "junk drawer."  I can manage something in small bits like this and think it will really add up.

5.    Do something that I haven't had time for: Edit and order a bunch of photos, learn to embroider, get back to reading, or do some home project.  Something along those lines that I haven't had time to do in the past 2.5 years.

good reads

My super smart friends Lindsay and Kim recently posted great lists of books on their blogs -- click their names to see.  I'm a life-long reader (thanks Mom!) and book lover so as soon as I saw these I knew I had to blog about it myself.   

The first 100 come from Lindsay, the next 50 are from Kim and the last straglers are my own additions.  Their lists cover a lot of territory!  Some of this stuff is classic, heavy reading and some is just stuff I think everyone should read.  I know I have many more on my to-read list, but these come to mind first.  I've edited the lists to reflect my own experience.  I also added another part to Kim's key -- some of these books I read many years ago and really don't remember them so I might re-read. 

Do you have any suggestions of your own?  If so, I'd love for you to leave a comment. 

When school is finally out I have planned to read some of the classics off these lists which I have yet to tackle.  I will read anything really as long as it comes with a good recommendation.  My favorite stuff is crime fiction, true crime, mystery, poetry and historical stuff.

Key

• BOLD = Read it
• Stike-through = not interested
• Italics Underlined = read part of it or in process
• **BOLD = Read it, but would like to read it again

1          To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2        The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Editor), Joseph Smith (Translator)
3          Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4        Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
5        The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
6          **Holy Bible
7          1984 by George Orwell
8        Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
9        Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
10        The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
11        Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
12        Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
13      Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
14        The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
15      The Giver by Lois Lowry
16      The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
17      Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
18        The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
19      The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, Robin Buss (Translator)
20      The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
21      Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
22        Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, Margaret Atwood (Introduction)
23      Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
24      The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
25      Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
26        **The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
27      New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
28      One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
29      The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
30        The Princess Bride by William Goldman
31      East of Eden by John Steinbeck
32      The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
33        Animal Farm by George Orwell
34        Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
35        Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
36      Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
37      Lord of the Flies by William Golding
38      Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
39      A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, Peter Sis (Illustrator)
40        **Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
41        Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
42      Life of Pi by Yann Martel
43      Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
44        A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
45      Watership Down by Richard Adams
46        Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
47      A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
48      The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
49        Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
50        Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
51      Dune by Frank Herbert
52      The Odyssey by Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator)
53      Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
54        Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
55      The Road by Cormac McCarthy
56      The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
57      The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
58        The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
59        A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
60      The Complete Works of William Shakspeare
61      Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt
62      The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
63      The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
64      The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
65      Night by Elie Wiesel
66      The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
67        The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
68      Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
69      The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear (Translator)
70      Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
71      A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
72        Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
73        Dracula by Bram Stoker
74      The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
75        Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
76      The Iliad by Homer, Robert Fagles (Translator)
77        Moby Dick by Herman Melville
78        **War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Henry Gifford (editor)
79        Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
80        Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Richard Andrews (Editor)
80      Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
82      Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
83      The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
84      The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
85      Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
86      The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
87      Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
88      Emma by Jane Austen, Fiona J. Stafford (Editor)
89      On the Road by Jack Kerouac
90        The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeannette Walls
91      All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
92      The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
93      The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
94      Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
95        A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
96      The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
97      Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
98      The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
99      Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
100     Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

 

Kim’s additions (in no particular order):

1.       The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
2.       I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
3.       Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
4.       Beloved by Toni Morrison
5.       Essential Rumi by Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
6.       The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
7.       M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang
8.       Holy Quran by Allah
9.         Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
10.      Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
11.     Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
12.      The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
13.     The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
14.      The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
15.     The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
16.     Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
17.     The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
18.     The Art of War by Sun Tzu
19.      Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
20.     Beowulf
21.     The Republic by Plato
22.      The Crucible by Arthur Miller
23.     Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
24.     Roots by Alex Haley
25.      The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
26.      A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
27.     The Tibetan Book of the Dead
28.     Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda
29.     Paradise Lost by John  Milton
30.      James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
31.     Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
32.     The Aeneid by Publius Vergilius Maro
33.      Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
34.     Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
35.     The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
36.      **The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
37.     The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
38.     Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence 
39.      Walden by Henry David Thoreau
40.     Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
41.     The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
42.     The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
43.     Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
44.     Seven Valleys and Four Valleys by Baha'u'llah
45.      **How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie  
46.     The Kama Sutra
47.      Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
48.     Watership Down by Richard Adams
49.     Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
50.     Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

 

My additions (in no particular order)

1.         She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb

2.         Marley and Me by John Grogran           

3.         The Witches by Roald Dahl

4.         A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

5.         Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

6.         The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes

7.         Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

8.         In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

9.         **Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

10.        The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

11.        The Shack by William P Young

12.        One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

13.        The Stranger by Albert Camus

14.        A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway

15.        To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

16.        Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

friday favorites

The Sookie Stackhouse Book Series: I.AM.HOOKED.  I started Book 4 yesterday (please, please, please don't leave a comment telling me what "potentially" happens in future books!) and I think I'm on Chapter 7 alreay.  I've flown through Books 1-3 and like a crackhead have gone to the library, bookstore or Kindle store at the end of each book to try and obtain the next.  :)  I'm reading Book 4 on my iPhone via Kindle since I couldn't find the book in the store or at the library and I needed it right away! :)

A lot of people refer to this series as the "grown up" Twilight and I guess that is mostly true although the series was written well before Twilight.  I like them both equally and for different reasons. 

True Blood on HBO: If you already watch True Blood then you know Season Two started a few weeks ago.  Adam and I have been hooked on this show ever since we watched the first episode.  Last year we watched the entire Season One in less than two days via HBO On-Demand (Comcast cable).  We couldn't wait for Season Two and have trouble waiting for the next Sunday to come around! 

I know most Sookie fans love Bill Compton, but I do not.  I am Team Eric all the way -- especially with Alexander Skarsgard in that role.  He's perfect for the role with regard to his description in the book series as far as I'm concerned.  The TV series storyline differs a lot from the book series so that may bother some people, but it doesn't really matter to me.

The Hangover: Holy crap, this movie was hilarious.  I don't believe I stopped laughing the entire time.  I have heard the exact same review from literally everyone I know who has seen this movie.  Some of the stuff was over the top, but somehow they managed to make it seem hilarious and not stupid.  If you've been to Vegas you will have a few extra laughs.  It really made me want to go back soon.  The main cast was great and really had a comedic chemistry together.  I will definitely be buying the DVD when it comes out.

Dexter: I think this might be my new (new-to-me) favorite show.  The First and Second Seasons just became available via Netflix Instant (we stream through our XBox 360 and I HIGHLY recommend it!) so Adam I and started to watch it last night.  We don't have Showtime, but we've long wanted to watch this series.  Last night we got through episodes 1-3 and I think we're both hooked.  I love anything that has to do with crime - both fiction and non-fiction - so this show is very interesting to me.  I cannot wait to watch more episodes. 

 

I'd love to hear what you are reading and watching.  :)  Happy Friday!

doing

this:

 

that:

 

this:

 

and that:

Trying to do some fun things and fit it all in between work and school.  Thankfully I have only 12 weeks of school left.  I'm getting really antsy to finish!

today

I had a crappy day.  No particular reason really.  An early morning pissy client put me in a foul mood that was hard to shake, but otherwise I just didn't want to be at the office.

Nothing a trip to Barnes and Noble, with a coupon, couldn't cure!

 

Hope to be back to regular blogging soon.

Twilight stalking

The weekend before last BFF Jessica and I went on a roadtrip to Forks, WA in search of Edward Cullen or other hot, teenage vampires.  We didn't have anything to do that particular Saturday and figured Twilight stalking was as good a plan as any.  After checking out the weather and seeing that it was going to be 55* and sunny in Forks, without any rain the deal was sealed. 

We left early in the afternoon and it took us about 3.5 hours to get there.  The first half of the drive was extrememly boring, but the second half really made the entire trip.

Driving around the Olympic pennisula was breathtaking, to say the least.  The route is packed with gorgeous-green-Northwest scenery and takes you through the mountains and along various bays.  Thankfully there are several pull-offs along the way to stop, take photos, and drink it all in.

We stopped to take photos both before and after we explored Forks.

  

  

  

  

Getting to the town of Forks was a little anti-climatic as we'd expected.  There was very minimal filming there for the movie and most of the sites were staged.  We took a few photos and drove around a bit before heading home.  The town is VERY small and you can see everything on just a couple of main roads.

Bella's red pickup:

  

And the sticker Jacob put on the back:

  

Forks High School where all the magic happens:

  

The outdoor store that Bella works at:

  

And Dr. Cullen's parking spot at the hospital:

  

We also saw Charlie's police cruiser, but I guess I didn't take a photo of that.  We didn't end up going to the Swan or Cullen house - they are both staged and private residences.  We also didn't end up stopping anywhere in Port Angeles, but we did drive through it twice.  

All in all it was a fun roadtrip and worth the ride since we live so close.  It's nothing that I'd fly out for (unless they were filming -haha!), but if you're close it makes for a fun day!  I was the passenger so I ended up finishing most of my Bella's mittens on the way.  I had hoped to completely finish them and take some FO photos in Forks, but it didn't work out that way. 

Here are some links that I found about touring the area in case anyone is interested in going:

After the Bite 

Twilight Tour 

Dorks in Forks  

FO: Bella's Mittens

 

these.are.the.yummiest.mittens!  love, love, love!

I finished these last week and they finally dried a few days ago.  If you're a Twilight-obsessed freak like my bestie Jessica and I then you will recognize these mittens from the movie.  When we saw the movie the first time we both noticed Bella's mittens immediately and had to have them. 

Luckily for me some sweet Twilight fan created a free pattern that is spot-on.  The pattern was free as well which is a great bonus.  Luckily for Jessica her bestie is a knitter and really, really nice to make her these mittens!!  HAHA.  It's going to be hard to give these up actually and I'll probably start my own pair soon out of jealousy! 

I love the way these turned out.  They are nice and thick and very cozy.  I really love the cables, but I think the chunky ribbing on the underside is my favorite part. 

 

  

  

Here are the details:

• Pattern: Bella's Mittens by Subliminal Rabbit

• Yarn: Paton's Classic Wool Merino -- I used 2 skeins and held the yarn doubled

• Needles: Size 9 KnitPicks Options -- I magic looped these

• Time: About 10 days

• Ravelry: Bella's Mittens

twilight

 

Ok, ok....I get the hype now. 

Last night this book sucked me in.  Denise called it -- said I wouldn't be able to put it down.  And I couldn't.  I stayed up way too late reading and it was a rough morning.  I hope to have some time to read more after bed.  I'm already about 200 pages in.  

Can't wait for the long plane ride filled with time for reading and the movie. 

new books.

I picked these up last night during a quick trip to the grocery store after knitting. 

James Patterson is one of my most favorite authors.  I always pick up his latest book within a few days of release.  It usually takes me a mere few hours to finish his books because I never can put them down!

I wasn't going to cave into the whole "Twilight" phenomenon, but I decided to give the first book a try.  I've always liked vampire stories actually -- mostly Ann Rice stuff.  We'll see if this one lives up to the hype!  I plan to see the movie with a group of my cousins when I go home next week so I'm going to try and read the book on the long-ass flight.

I haven't had much time to read at all lately.  I don't think I've actually sat down with a book in several months -- unless you count school books. 

Reading is definitely one of my favorite pasttimes though and I'll be really excited when I have more free time for it.

What are you reading lately?

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A couple of good reads

I've been catching up on my James Patterson reading over the last 2 months.  JP is one of my favorite authors and before school I would devour each and every one of his new books in a few nights flat.  Lately though it's taken me a little bit to catch up.  It certainly doesn't help that he releases a new book every other month.  The guy is a machine!

So I've read his last 3 books and I wanted to share them here because they were all great.  If you're into suspense/thrillers/crime fiction - you will probably love JP.  I love his style of writing.  His chapters are never more than 3 or 4 pages long and I love that. 

The Quickie

I finished this one yesterday at lunch.  The night I started reading it, I couldn't stop.  I read 200 pages the first night because it was so intense.  This is probably my favorite JP book (I've read them all so far).  It's a crime fiction and really full of suspense.  It's a quick read and I guarantee you'll have a hard time putting it down.

The 6th Target

This one is the 6th in a series called the Women's Murder Series.  It's not my favorite from the series, but it was good and worth the read.  The series itself is really good - it has a great storyline about 4 best girlfriends who are on various sides of law enforcement.  It follows each of their stories, but is mainly based around the detective.  I really like crime fiction series and I was glad when JP came out with this one.  They're all numbered so it's easy to figure out the order if you want to start the series.

Cross

I read this one several months back, but it was great and worth the mention.  This is actually book 12 in the Alex Cross series.  This series has been around a while and it's really good.  Every ending keeps you waiting for the next book.  This particular series is really popular and it's been around for a while.  One of the books in the series called Kiss the Girls is the book that the move Kiss the Girls was based on.  I would definitely start this series from the beginning if you like crime fiction.  You will be hooked.

And with that I'm going to take a little reading break for the next few weeks to catch up on knitting, crocheting and scrapbooking.  Of course JP has 2 new books coming out soon - one in September and one in November.  I will be ready for the book in September for sure.

Have a great weekend!   :)