Top 10 Books of 2009

These are the books I've read this year that I have enjoyed the most with a little bit about them (a teaser, if you will), because I just know that due to my recommendation you're going to run out and read all 10.

Get excited.

Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld

Girl goes to prep school, lots of teenage angst, a little bit of attitude towards her parents. Good writing, a little longer than your average novel.

A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson

Exactly what the title says - explained many things in science that I had never understood, usually in 3-5 pages per topic. Covers a LOT of ground. Easy to read a little bit and then pick up again later to read the next topic. Written by a travel/humor writer, so makes you laugh out loud.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon

Tells a story about a curious incident from the perspective of an autistic boy, who narrates the novel. I know I'm really behind on reading this, but I really loved it. Easy to read and super interesting.

You Suck, Christopher Moore

Nontraditional story about vampires (hence the title), which also makes you laugh out loud. Set in San Francisco which was fun for me. Author of lots of other popular books, so you may have read some of the others.

Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg

Semi-autobiographical story of a transgendered woman coming of age and coming out in the 1970s. Some parts are tough to read, especially when you realize they're based in truth. Made me want to be an advocate.

The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst

Story of a man looking for meaning in his dog (I know it sounds weird) after his wife dies, intermixed with chapters of the story of the couple meeting, dating, and falling in love. Super sad, but fantastic characters.

The Meaning of Wife, Anne Kingston

A historical perspective of how the meaning of a wife has changed over hundreds of years. Written from a smart-ass feminist perspective, so if that's not your thing, you won't enjoy it. Interesting take on things. Lots of writing in the margins.

Bee Season, Myra Goldberg

Story of a girl who has been completely uninteresting until she wins the school spelling bee. Family of characters who have dysfunctional relationships with each other, and separate lives that the rest of the family knows about.

Testimony, Anita Shreve

My favorite author! How a scandal at a New England boarding school changes the lives of everyone directly and indirectly involved. Heart wrenching at times. Definitely made me think.

The Devil in the White City, Eric Larson

Just finished this today, and have gushed about it all day. Intertwining true stories about the planning, and building of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 and a serial killer in Chicago at that same time. All derived from primary sources, it's a great read and even better when you take a second to remember that it's a true story.

What are your favorite reads from this year?

Let down.

So I read alot. You may have heard this before. There are very few books that I dislike so much that I can't finish them, even if I mentally (or verbally) criticize the book the whole way through. Anyway, I picked up a book tonight off my fiction shelf to start reading (yes I have a fiction shelf, and a non fiction shelf. don't judge) and was really enjoying getting home from work around 5:30 and sitting down to read. I finished about half the book before Dan and I sat down to eat dinner and watch the premiere of the new season of the Biggest Loser (yay!) Afterwards, I picked the book back up and within a chapter, things went downhill. Horrible writing and characters, totally predictable ending. Granted, it is technically a "chick lit" book, complete with pink cover, so maybe I was asking for it. But, I had to finish it. So I pretty much sped through the rest and threw it across the room afterwards, being so annoyed that someone actually published it. Ugh. It's so dissapointing for me when books let me down. So, now I will be starting another book before bed to get the taste of that book out of my mouth. *rant over* Good news: Missy Higgins is coming yet again to San Francisco, this time with Justin Nozuka! Even better news, the show is March 23rd, and I leave for a conference in DC on the 24th. Meant to be, clearly. ~Mood shift~ Bad news: My grandma is about to go through another round of chemo, six weeks long. Not as intensive as "traditional" chemo, but still difficult. A catscan this week also showed some new spots on her lungs, which is not good news. The doctors are not sure if the chemo regimen they have planned will take care of these new spots, so...yeah. I have avoided the freak out about her cancer, because her doctors have been overwhelmingly positive and she has sounded very strong when I have talked with her. But I'll admit, this new development officially makes me nervous. So, if you are a person that prays and you've got a spot open on your prayer list...my family and I would be grateful. And, now I don't really know how to wrap up after that. How about... Happy anniversary Missy and Franklin!!

Insomnia.

Well, here I am, a product of a mismanaged sleep schedule, awake at 2 am, Nashville time. Dan and I are here visiting his family for Thanksgiving again - we both got in on Saturday after surprisingly not late or horrendous flights, and I can not sleep. I haven't been falling asleep much before 3 am at all, which is not exciting, as then I don't wake up until around 11 am. So, I get up and have breakfast while everyone else has lunch. Today, we got out of the house and went to a really nice art museum in downtown Nashville and by the time we got back, had dinner, played with Dan's nephews and settled down, I was actually tired. And fell asleep for about an hour. You know when you fall asleep with all your clothes on and the lights on and you wake up and go back to sleep feeling kind of bashful? That is not what happened here. I got an hour of sleep and have now been awake for the past two hours, being all pissed off that my body took a nap. Dan, of course, is fast asleep next to me. *shakes fist* Tomorrow Dan and I are going on a pilgrimage of sorts - I don't want to ruin the surprise for tomorrow's post - but we're getting up early, so hopefully that will reset this ridiculousness. I'm sure you're asking, "Why aren't you reading? You wanted to read an ungodly amount of books this year?" Well, the answer is that I finished my 50 books for the year, which is cool. (I have a list on 43 Things - and I was really excited to check "Done" on that goal) I'm still reading though, my current book is about nuns. It's actually super interesting, but there's only so much you can read about nuns in one night. I hit my limit about 20 minutes ago....so here I am, rambling late at night to the interwebs. *43 Things is a place where you keep lists of things you want to accomplish. Yes, it is an online website for crazy listmakers like myself. The next goal I want to work on is cooking all the recipes in a cookbook. Dan's brother and sister-in-law actually just gave us a seasonal cookbook - the recipes using fruits and veggies that are in season (working on some of the tree-hugging goals from last night's post) so I think that may be the book to work from. Just in case this problem happens again tomorrow, can you all let me know what blogs/links you've been into lately? I don't have my computer so all of my bookmarks are currently unavailable...and I may need something to entertain me while all of this Nashville suburb sleeps...

Thinking of Titles Late at Night is Awful.

I was clicking around to a lot of the blogs I regularly read tonight and found myself getting frustrated that a majority of them haven't been updated lately. OH THE IRONY. Lots of fun things have been happening since my flurry of posts a few weeks ago. There was an enormous book sale, which totally ruined my promise that I wouldn't buy anymore books for awhile. There was a trip to Lake Tahoe to celebrate Dan and my five year anniversary. There was a trip to Oregon to visit Dana while she was up there for work - which included wineries, fantastic outlet shopping, ice cream, and general craziness. There were new wine racks!! (yes, you'll notice the plural. More than one new rack was needed to contain all the wine) However, each of those things deserves a post of it's very own since those were all great things. So, this one is just going to be about the books, which really isn't very interesting to many of you, but too darn bad, because this here is my blog. I found out about it on *surprise* one of the blogs I read. It's an annual used book sale held by the San Francisco Public Libraries for four days. They rent a pavilion in Fort Mason, which is in effect an ENTIRE pier. Seriously. And it is full of used books that cost, at the very most, $5. Most of them cost $1. It's really quite wonderful. I was so excited about it that I took the afternoon off from work on Thursday in order to go, because we were going to be gone the rest of the weekend in Lake Tahoe. So, I loaded up on recyclable shopping bags, hopped on the bus in SF and knew I had arrived at my own personal heaven when I walked in the door and someone pointed me towards the SHOPPING CARTS. Like I needed any more enablers in my life. Anyway, like I said, it's huge, it's cheap and it's piles upon piles upon rows upon tables of books. I shopped for two hours, eventually put back at least a third of the books I grabbed and left with 16 books for $34. And now, the bookshelves can not hold any more books, so Dan has started a pile of books next to the bookshelf. Seriously this time. Until the books on the floor have a home on a shelf there will be no more book buying. For real. Pier full of books. Please notice size of van for perspective. Um...can I live here? Is wonderful.

Other California goings on...

I am on a posting ROLL people! I hope you're as impressed with me as I am with myself. So what do I actually have to talk about... *I'm 38 books into my goal of reading 50 books this year. It's feeling very accomplishable at this point. Plus, books are moving out of the house as they're being read, which means I can buy more books soon. (If you haven't heard, I'm currently banned from buying more books. Because they threaten to take over the whole of our apartment.) *Last weekend's adult plans to go to Target and Costco also ended up including Michaels, Office Depot and IKEA (twice). Oh my do I feel suburban. *I'm really enjoying the fact that I've actually gotten to watch the first three VT football games! I didn't think I'd be able to watch many this year since we aren't ranked, so I've been very happily surprised. Dan and I are hoping to watch a couple with the Bay Area VT Alumni Association and perhaps even meet some people. Only took a year... *We did go the first Cal game (Cal/Michigan State) although we didn't buy season tickets this year, as we weren't really feeling the games out here. But, I was really eager to see some college football. So, there we were. The Golden Knights (Josh - is that name right? I know we talked about it while you were here) also parachuted into the stadium at halftime, to the delight/horror of the girl behind us, who kept exclaiming "He's landing too fast!" while not thinking through the fact that this was probably NOT their first time doing this. Student Section: *My staff seriously does love Dan. See below. *Still love the fog. Photo is taken from the Lawrence Hall of Science at night (obviously)

More late night thoughts

*So believe it or not, Dan and I have lived here for a year. Our moving anniversary passed last week on July 8th. Crazy I tell you. I think I missed it because I've blocked the memory of our incredibly stressful moving process.

*Public transportation pet peeves: Missing a bus by mere inches. People who talk REALLY LOUDLY on their cell phones continuing a conversation on a crowded bus.

*I have passed my airline curse onto my loved ones. My mom got stuck in Texas for 10 hours while trying to get to California (for work) and then they lost her luggage for three days.

*My new favorite song is "After Tonight" by Justin Nozuka, who I thought was some unknown guy who was playing on my Pandora station. Then I found out he's all over VH1, but whatever, you can give me the credit when you fall in love with the song too. Go download it! But be warned the chorus gets stuck in your head like a beeyotch. Also, Ro, he's half Japanese.

*Blog posts with photos to look forward to: 12 on the 12th - A Day in the life of Dan, the SF Pride Parade and a city walk.

*The AFSCME (no, I do not know what it stands for) union is on strike here all week long because they quite simply don't get paid enough. This union encompasses our custodians, maintenance staff, groundskeepers, and food service workers. Good thing it's not during the school year because this place would be a hot mess. So, many of the RDs and I aren't eating in the dining halls this week to support the strikers, many of whom we know and work with and interact with every day. So, we're alternating people making dinner for everyone. Tonight Dan and I made breakfast for dinner for about 10 people. Good times. Dan makes killer raspberry chocolate chip pancakes.

*I have read 30 books this year so far. Currently reading: "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston and am about to start "Ship of Fools" by Katharine Anne Porter, and "The Color Purple."

*This blogpost is also the latest edition of the "I am SO EXCITED to see everyone" newsletter. Clearly, there are good times to be had. See exhibit A below.

Long weekend...what did we do with it?

All this free time on a three day weekend and I couldn't really tell you what we did. Nothing too exciting...no BBQs, no hanging out in someone's backyard to celebrate the kick-off of summer. But I will recount it for you anyway in thrilling detail because...we thought blogging would be a good idea. Definitely did some sleeping in on Saturday, after the long day of closing happened on Friday. We did our weekly grocery shopping (not at the Farmers Market this time) and as far as we can tell we finally watched the Grey's season finale - which was awesome. Sunday we woke up even later and made brunch. Dan is usually in charge of the pancakes, and I take the bacon and eggs. This week, we had chocolate raspberry pancakes, which were phenomenal - it was a good experiment. After brunch, we decided to maybe actually work on some of the DIY projects we've been saying we're going to do, so we broke out the paint and painted some picture frames to put up some old-time postcards of DC that I found in an antique store. And then we painted some paintings. The backstory on this is that my second year of grad school, we opened a new student center, and so the organization I was in (Graduate Student Senate) got a brand new office. It was pretty barren. Our very creative VP went out, bought some blank canvasses and some paint and printed off some abstract posters that we copied from and voila - art for our new office walls. So, we're basically doing the same thing here. While we did buy a gorgeous photo in Monterrey, and Dan has some great art from Cuba that we framed and hung, we have some big blank spaces we need to fill. The paintings we did Sunday were minis, working up to the big canvasses. They'll be up by the time many of you visit in September and the rule is no laughing. Also, while we painted I think we watched no less than 8 episodes of the West Wing (season 1). Seriously. Today, we took a walk and I talked to my mom and Dan bought some books and we rented a movie (Rendition with Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon - has anyone seen it?) and yeah, we're incredibly boring. In more exciting news, however, summer should be a good time. My mom will be out to visit in early June, and then Dan and I will be travelling to Ohio for a wedding. I think in early July I will be home visiting (maybe possibly...more definite plans to come). Near the end of July, my work will start gearing up again, August will be exhausting and then in September almost everyone I love will be out here. So, I know things will be moving along. Also, I highly recommend the book Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Really, really good. End of most boring post ever. Meghan - will you be in Oxford on June 15? HAPPY BIRTHDAY LAURA!!

Late Night thoughts v.4

*Our apartment experienced not one but TWO floods this weekend for two completely different reasons. It was pretty awesome.

*I just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love which has been a bestseller for awhile. It's about this woman who takes a year out of her life and lives for four months each in Italy (to experience pleasure, eating and doing whatever she wants), India (to find her version of God while living in an Ashram), and Indonesia (trying to find a balance between pleasure and devotion). So, it was definitely a good read. Didn't change my life. People are RAVING about this book though...maybe I missed it?

*Target on Sundays = not a fun experience. Do not plan on repeating that anytime soon.

*Lots of cultural type things are happening on campus because it's almost the end of the semester, so it's time for all the clubs on campus to put on their large events. I'm kind of a big deal, so students invite me to everything and I can't go to all of them people! The guilt I'm feeling over this is kind of ridiculous. Although, this weekend we did go to the annual Cal community Native American pow-wow. It was awesome.

*Dan has recently been making a big thing about how most deodorants have aluminum in them (did you know? it's actually pretty bad for you...) so today while we were at Whole Foods (yes, we shop at Whole Foods) we each bought a "natural" deodorant that is aluminum free. I told him I would try it for a week and see how it goes. For serious, Dan's is a scent called "Woodspice" and it's uber strong smelling...so, his armpits are going to smell like pine trees. Not sure how I'm feeling about that. I mean, I'd rather pine trees than funk, but really? Pine trees?

*Next week is MAY and during the lovely, beautiful,glorious month of May, students move out. I can't believe the school year is almost over! 4 more weeks. Crazy talk.

*Is everyone around the country getting all this information about plastics of all kind being bad because they leach chemicals into everything that is being put in them? We hear all kinds of commercials and info bits about plastic bottles, plastic bgs, tupperware, Nalgenes, etc are the bane of all of our existence. Just wondering if everyone else is getting this too, or if it's just a West Coast thing.

I overheard this conversation at Target today:
Kid (about 10?): Mom, I'm thirsty
Mom: We don't need a bottle, lets go get some FREE water out of the water fountain! It's yummy!

Also, the mayor of San Francisco has decided that no city office or event can have bottled water (due to mentioned plastic issue but also because the Bay Area has the cleanest tap water in the nation) and so on and so forth. We're crazy liberals out here.

**Just to clarify, we are converting from tupperware to glass, nalgene to stainless steel bottles, getting rid of bottled everything. I was just wondering if everyone else is getting the hard sell about plastics too.

***Also, thanks to David for differentiating all the types - it's unfortunate, Berkeley only recycles 1 and 2. But now I know to stay as far away from 7 as possible (hermaphroditic rat babies? That's not ok).

Also, I know I haven't blogged about my Georgia/Florida adventures, but here's a free photo of Ben in front of Paula Deen's restaurant (in Savannah). Clearly, he's a big fan.

12 on the 12th

I love that Ro is posting 12 pictures on the 12th of every month. It's fun to get a glimpse into someone's life that is so different from the one that you experience every day. For the past two months especially, I have been promising myself that I would post 12 pictures from my day...except for the past two months, Dan has been out of town and had the camera. Last time he came back with approximately 4 pictures from the entire trip, so...maybe he'll take 6 this time? I decided to make do with reliving 13 things that happened to me on the 13th (today) and having you (that means YOU loyal reader) respond in kind. Next month, I will make an effort to do the picture thing. So, now I have to tap into my memory and remember what actually happened today. 1 - Woke up because Lily was scratching on the mattress again. She must know by now that this invariably wakes me up in a shitty mood. So, this was at 7:50, my alarm was set for 9. Kicked the cats out. 2 - Woke up again at 8:30 when James started meowing for food. Seriously, I'm ready for Dan to come back so we can go back to alternating mornings of "It's YOUR turn to feed them" 3 - Helped out with two interviews for a student staff position next year. The candidates were polar opposites. The first woman was a walking sorority girl stereotype, complete with breathy speech, lots of "um" and "like," too much makeup and blond hairflipping. *sigh* The second one was great though - at least he dressed up for it! 4 - HA. Just thinking about this frustrates me. So, I had to take a bunch of stuff to a meeting in another building. Additionally, I had to make a lot of copies for said meeting. So, I loaded up a cart (it was heavy crap) and went early to make the copies before the meeting. The copier and I fought a perilous battle, and basically, the copier kicked my sorry ass. So, by the time the copier was done, I was 25 minutes late AND found out that the meeting was actually in MY building the whole time. GAH. 5 - Went shopping for a program with my two Program Assistants (also student staff positions) who are pretty much fantastic. We went to a discount fabric store and tried to pretend that we were in Mood and on Project Runway. There was also Starbucks. It was nice after the hellish copier/meeting debacle. 6 - Had to make sure to get my Program Assistant to change the settings on the department van we'd been using back to English rather than French. It is hard to understand what a vehicle is telling you when it is speaking French. 7 - Dropped them off, ran inside, had a 10 minute meeting with my Hall Association treasurer, picked up another staff member (an RA) and went to Costco to multitask - have a one on one while shopping for some (other) programs 8 - Marveled at how much candy you can buy at Costco for $200 9 - Roped a resident into helping us unload said stash of candy from the van 10 - Went to a program on GRE/Grad school admissions that some of my other RAs put on, laughed at the presenter guy because he wasn't...good. 11 - Went to another program! Helped residents make mini AIDS quilt panels for a Berkeley quilt. Also, felt very un-creative. 12 - Ate cheerios while Lily curled up on my lap 13 - Finished my non fiction book for the month! Woot. It was a busy day.

New favorite things

Life is still rolling along I guess. Dan is now in Austin, working for South by Southwest, the big music festival, so I'm stuck here in Berkeley all alone. Don't tell him, but I'm throwing huge parties while he's away. It's shweet.

So, my new favorite things:
1. Bookmooch
I joined this online group called which is a book sharing community thing. Which I totally think Blue Benson should join, BTW Laura. So, you list all the books that you own that you don't want anymore, and then people ask you to send them to them. You're responsible for paying for postage everytime you ship a book to someone, and then when you ask for a book to be sent to you, you pay nothing at all. It's a good time. I listed 10 books on Friday night and by Saturday, 8 of them were already requested! I'm going to have a lovely time at the post office tomorrow morning. Every book you list is worth 1/10th of a point, when you send a book, you get a point, and when you send to people internationally, you get three points. For each point you have, you are eligible to have a book sent to you. So, I've requested three so far. I'm kind of excited about it in my dork way. For reals, if you have a lot of books, and have some that you don't think you'll read again, this is a great way to get rid of them and get other books you actually want to read for free! OR if you don't want to go through the hassle, save your books and give them to me!(http://www.bookmooch.com/)

2. Vosges Chocolate Bacon Bar
OK I know what you're thinking. Bacon in a chocolate bar. EW? People. Let me tell you. This is a fantastically wonderful experience. It's made by Vosges which is a relatively snooty chocoalte company, started in Chicago, and they specialize in odd chocolate pairings (curry powder, lavender, other assorted spices). Yeah, so I heard about this bacon bar which combines two great loves of mine (yes, I count bacon as a love) and decided that I should probably test it out. It's unbeliveable. Sweet and salty and bacony. Real bacon pieces right there in the chocolate. Wow. Stop judging and try it out.

3. Savannah, Georgia
Ok, so I haven't been yet, but I'm visiting Ben and Jess at the end of the month for a couple of days and I'm REALLY excited about it. Not only is it a new place, which is exciting, but CC reunion in a new town? C'mon people, that's the stuff fantastic weekends are made of.

*pauses to consider if people will still be my friend*
4. Fromager d'Affinois (fro-mah-ZHAY dah-fee-NWAH)
Note - I did not write that pronunciation guide.
It's a cheese. A fantastically amazing cheese. I know that this is ridiculously snooty, even more snooty than joining a wine club, but um, it's on the "best things I've ever eaten" list.

5. The weather in the Bay Area in early March
It was sunny, cloudless and almost 70 degrees all week. But it also hasn't been windy, so it feels toasty warm. I've been in flip flops since last weekend.

6. Daylight savings time!
Wasn't that excited that we lost an hour of sleep last night (and seriously, pondering on that...where does it go? It's a little mind boggling that we decide that that hour just simply doesn't exist) BUT I love the fact that the sunlight lasts until 7 PM now. The getting dark at 4:30 PM in December thing really makes me sad.

7. Laura being awesome
So, Laura got accepted into her summer internship program in London which is AWESOME. I hope she's up for visits!

8. Rosa
For serious people, she comments on blogs from around the world. Can't you do the same while you're bored at work?!?

The end for now :) Fun new things to report on soon!

Photo for an upcoming celebration. Happy Birthday Jess!

Late Night Updates version...4?

**This weekend was lovely - 60 degrees and sunny. And headaches. I've had terrible headaches all weekend, so Dan has put up with quite the level of whining. But we've been rather productive. Doing some cool things, well, cool-ish things, things that we really enjoy (going out to brunch, movies, bookstores, etc.)

**We organized the crap out of our spare bedroom recently. Things into storage, things onto shelves, things out of storage containers, other things into the containers. After being here almost 10 months, we've realized what we need handy and what we really don't need handy at all. Plus, we've been doing some shopping at Costco, so we have bulk items we need to store better (Where on earth did we think we were going to store 2 oversized jars of Nutella?) So, as I love to organize, it was a good time for me. The good news is, just by figuring out how to use our space better, we've realized that A) we have more of it than we realized and B) we don't need to buy the two pieces of furniture we thought we needed to buy. This is good news. More money for wine. I mean, savings.

**After writing the last post about how I hadn't really been reading in Feburary, I decided to...start reading. The book that Meghan chose for me in Feb. (The King Must Die, by Mary Renault) actually ended up being really engaging and I read most of it in a couple of nights, even though it took me awhile to get into. So hooray for me. I finished it yesterday (only one day late!) and returned it to the library to get my next one, which Ro chose - it's called "Second Class Citizen" by Buchi Emecheta.

**Speaking of books, I had my first book club meeting last Thursday. They're still emailing me, so I guess that means I wasn't too socially awkward or anything. We're trying to decide what book to read this first month. Has anyone read any of these: The Tipping Point, Three Cups of Tea, Love in the Time of Cholera? Good, bad, not worth the time, life changing?

**Also this weekend, we watched a movie a day. I'd been on a really bad movie hiatus lately (Kevin, try not to get upset) because we'd gone through a phase of watching a movie 3 or 4 nights a week when we first joined the Blockbuster mail program (their version of netflix). Because they send them to you, and they just sit there until you watch them, and you want to send them back and get new movies and oh my, the pressure. So eventually, Dan just started watching some of them without me, and burning the other ones so he could send them back. So, we have this pretty significant stack of movies that we've never seen. And every time I ask Dan if he wants to watch something while we have dinner, he brings out the stack of DVDs we haven't watched and then I have to clarify that by "something" what I really meant was, lets watch the West Wing. Anyway, we started watching them this weekend. Friday night we watched "The Graduate" which I had never seen before, and I kind of have mixed feelings about it. I know it's a classic and everything, but...yeah. Saturday we watched "The Queen" which is one of those movies that got rave reviews and so I thought we should see, but never really sat down to watch. It was actually really enjoyable - we were both surprised by how much we liked it. And tonight we watched "Sicko" which you can't really enjoy as it were, but it did result in us having yet another "Why don't we live somewhere else?!?!" conversations.

**My dad and his brothers are going to be doing a triathlon in June in Philadelphia with Team and Training (The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society) in memory of my cousin Michael. You can visit their team page here: http://www.active.com/donate/tntsonj/delo. Dad will be running the last part (Jeff will be swimming and Mike will be biking). Hopefully I will be able to get to the event!

**We think that March is when James will turn one! Our vet and the agency we got them from can't really nail down a much more specific time frame than "around March" so please send birthday wishes. Kidding of course. We aren't planning on having other cats over to have a party or anything, but I wouldn't put it past me in old age. Just sayin.

This Lily on the counter, with her head completely inside a vase. She's kind of our "special" child.

And this is James, sitting neat and proper, even inside a box that is there for him to play with.

Fellow blog inspiration

So, I've really enjoyed one of the only blogs I link to from here, DC365. I appreciate it not only because she enjoys a good restaurant, and is funny, but also because the premise of the blog is one that I can get behind - being a tourist in one's own city/area. It was always nice, when we still lived in DC, to read about things that we probably wouldn't have heard about otherwise. So, now being in the Bay Area, we've been consciously trying to get out and be tourists, as we still are kind of tourists, being new to the area and all. So, I decided to count up how many new Bay Area specific things we've done (and blogged about) since we've been here. 1: Wander the Cal campus (yeah, I work here, so what? It totally counts.) 2: Ride a cable car in San Francisco 3: Eat clam chowder at Fisherman's Wharf 4: Had dinner in Chinatown 5: Taken pictures from the top of Coit Tower 6: Berkeley Kite Festival 7: Berkeley Rose Garden 8: Hot air ballooning over wine country 9: Napa (Thank you, captain obvious) 10: SF Renassiance Festival in Golden Gate Park 11: Oakland Chinatown Streetfest 12: Go to a Cal Football game 13: SF city/stairway walks 14: Visit Lombard Street! 15: See parrots of Telegraph Hill 16: Visit Transamerica Building (with Rosa no less!) 17: Stomp wine grapes in Napa 18: Taylor's Automatic Refresher (Napa, CA) 19: Visit Phyllo Farnsworth Plaque (I make glass tubes) 20: Cafe du Nord for concerts 21: Drive across the Golden Gate Bridge 22: Go to Stinson Beach for the day 23: Find Jack Early Park 24: Have Beard Papa cream puffs 25: Osha Thai, SF 26: Enjoy Gourmet East Bay Restaurant Week 27: Have dinner at the Claremont! 28: Go to a drag show on campus 29: Visit Sonoma, CA. Buy more wine. Huzzah! 30: Day trip to Santa Cruz, CA 31: Go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium 32: Visit Carmel, CA and find a $12 million house for sale 33: Enjoy Dine About Town in SF 34: Berkeley Winery Open House 35: Nopa 36: The Independent 37: Scharfenberger Factory Tour These last four things we have yet to blog about, but this list leaves me feeling pretty accomplished and excited that Dan and I have been getting out so much. Of course, there are things on my mental list that we didn't blog about, so clearly we should do better with that. However, it is worth nothing that DC365 managed to get through 100 things in a year (!!!!) and we've done 35 in about 8 months. Oy. We have our work cut out for us in the next few months! So, some late night updates are in order... **Dan is home from NY now - the kitties are glad to have him back during the day. Also, he's kind of become addicted to online poker. **I for some reason have follow through issues with my goals and have just recently started my books for the month of February. The one Meghan picked out for me was hard for me to get into, it's set in Ancient Greece and was a little hard to follow, but I'm into it now and enjoying it. Plus, it took awhile for Dan to get me motivated to get my ass to the Cal library to check out the book. BUT let me tell you that now that I've been there, I want to move in. I personally love libraries and wandering around in the stacks for long long periods of time. Anyway, I'm resolving to catch up with books for February and March by the end of March. **Our West Wing obsession has been replaced with the Planet Earth miniseries as of late, which came out awhile ago and I've been wanting to watch. It's really amazing photography and camera work, and it's pretty clear that this project was years and years in the making. We get one disc at a time from Blockbuster (there are 5) and each disc has three one-hour episodes. Please let me forewarn you that if you ever choose to watch it (and it's well worth it!) if you're a bleeding heart like myself, you will not enjoy the episode called "Ice Worlds" in which there are sad stories about animals not finding enough food and dying. YEAH. Not cheerful nightime material. It was akin to "March of the Penguins" which is one of the only movies I haven't been able to watch all the way through because it was so horrifically sad. **My cousin danced in THON this weekend at Penn State. If you've never heard of it, please visit here: http://www.thon.org/ It's the largest student-run philanthropic event in the world. It's a dance marathon that lasts for 48 (yes, you read that right) hours straight of dancing - no stopping, no sitting. It's intense. The money raised goes to help find a cure for pediatric cancer. It's such a large event in the campus community that more people want to dance than they have room for, so students compete to participate. The overall event this year raised $6,615,318.04. So, my cousin was picked and she did it! Strong. Clearly, my weekend was not nearly as inspiring. Or active. Or impressive. Or selfless. Or...yeah, you get the idea. **Did I mention on here that I joined a book club? I joined a book club with other women in the East Bay in their twenties. The first meeting is tomorrow, I'll fill you in after. Hopefully, it'll be as cool as Blue Benson's book club, which I always want to join. **Dan had his first motorcycle ride today. Yes, he still is in one piece. I'll bug him to blog about it soon :)

Random late night thoughts

*I had my first meeting with my new supervisor today, which was great. I think I'm really going to enjoy working with him. We talked about how I would like to work for Semester at Sea soon. He's going to help me out I think. Excitement. *I finished my non-fiction book of the month tonight, which is exciting, I actually met my first goal for the year. Let's see how January goes. Meghan picked my Feb. book and Ro picked my March book, so I guess I have to at least finish those two. *For my birthday, Dan got me Season 5 of the West Wing, and then we got Season 6 for Christmas/Hanukkah. You'll never guess what I got him for his birthday!!! Well, he also got Rollercoaster Tycoon - a NEW version! Can you even believe they still make that game? Anyway, he was upset he never got to play it. I'm pretty sure I'll be regretting that purchase this time next week. *Our cats will not stop trying to eat our food. It's like they're puppies who beg all the time who just also happen to fit in our laps. Also, James=attention whore. For serious. *Dan has this nasty cough/chest congestion thing that makes him sound like a really old man because he's trying to cough stuff up all the time. We've been sleeping in seperate beds because ew. No one wants to wake up to that. *We went out to dinner on Monday and I easily had the best dessert of my life at dinner. It was amazing amazing amazing. Dinner was just good, but who cares? *Seriously, no one suggested any good movies (Kevin Romano, what the heck??) *Have you heard that Britney Spears is only speaking in a British accent in public now? *sigh* I still love "Piece of Me" and I won't deny it. *Currently, it sounds like Dan is coughing up a hairball in the shower. Be jealous.

50th post. Woot.

It really has been a fun month for us out here. Having a car has allowed us to get out and see Northern California beyond Napa Valley. Don't get me wrong, I could hang out in Napa for days and days, but variation is good. Last Saturday, we drove down to Monterey, which is directly north of Carmel and Pebble Beach (famous golf course, no?) and had a lovely time. There were some scenic vistas, and some beaches and a very disappointing lighthouse (Dan apparently has a thing for lighthouses...learn something new every day. I just told him that under no circumstances will we be collecting mini lighthouse figurines) Anyway, we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is apparently the Number 1 aquarium in the country. Booyah Baltimore! I'm not sure who exactly ranks aquariums, but whatever. They had lots of fun things - fish to touch (Dan was totally the only person over 6 years old who was excited about touching starfish and the like), jellyfish, sharks, and OTTERS. So cute. I would like to have one as a pet, if possible. I think an otter and two cats = happiness, no? Of course, after being in the aquarium for over two hours, I was pretty much done being around shrieking (both with happiness and unhappiness) children. So, we took a lovely walk around Monterey's Cannery Row, which is a long set of old cannery buildings, that are from the 1930s-1950s when Monterey was a huge sardine canning town. No, seriously. Happily, in Monterey, some of this space has been converted into lovely wine tasting rooms in which there is, you know, wine and NO children. Ahhh relief. It really is crazy that no matter where you go in California, there is wine. Wineries on mountain roads, where the wine is actually grown. Winery tasting rooms on main streets in small California towns so that people can actually buy some wine in case they never travel on said mountain roads. Wineries on city piers. Wine wine everywhere. We're enjoying it. We went to two places, bought a couple of bottles and very nearly bought a gorgeous photograph. Please see: http://www.betterphoto.com/gallery/gallery.asp?mem=74968. In non "look how awesome my life is" news, tomorrow is Dan's birthday! He's going to be 26 and he's a little sensitive about how that age is closer to 30 than 20. So, definitely remind him as much as possible. We're smack in the middle of going out to a few dinners for his birthday season, much like we did for mine and we've had some amazing meals. A-m-a-z-i-n-g. Good thing he's sick and can't really taste anything. Ha! In other news, I finished the last book I was reading, "The Stone Diaries." Huzzah, I'm up to 4 out of 100! The author's style was great (her name is Carol Shields) and I got all wrapped up in the story. Have you ever read a book and at the end, assumed the characters are real people you could run into at Safeway or something? That's what her characters felt like. Wait - or is that just me being strange? If so, please still be my friend. Anyway, I'm onto my second book for the month (the goal this year is two books a month - one off the list and one non-fiction) which is called (please no freaking out) "Marriage, A History" and is really interesting. It's just a topic interest people!! OH also - I realized that I haven't been to see a movie in the theater in awhile (I went to see "I Am Legend" while I was home with Meghan and B Drake, but before that, I couldn't even tell you). Does anyone have any recommendations? Also, someone please pick a number between 1 and 100 for my next book off the list. (And by someone I mean probably Meghan, since she's the only one who reads this)

Much apprehension.

So we are in the precarious place of "I havent updated in so long, that I don't even know where to start, so I think I'll put it off until tomorrow." Clearly, I have been there for a quite awhile. But, instead of starting this post with an apology of why I haven't posted in so long (like many other posts) I'm jumping right in. No apology. You all have been coddled too long. You need some tough love. Or...something. Anyway, at some point, I might write a long extended memoir of our time with family over the holidays. But we spent extensive time with the approximately 4.78 people who read this blog, so that might have to wait for a later day. There are some fantastic pictures of the sheep farm that I don't think anyone got to see - get excited. I will say that being on the East Coast for a couple of weeks was pretty fantastic, although Dan and I went through some serious cat separation anxiety. Christmas on the sheep farm with family = good. Holiday dinner at Maggianos = good. New Year's Eve with the CC = goooooooooooood times. I'm feeling pretty lucky to have you all in my life. I might start getting some support services from B. Drake though about how to be away from you all so much! As for us right now, things are going well. Dan has recently (last week) started working on a 6-7 week project with the same company that he worked with for the Levi's project in DC. They are working on a premiere type event for YouTube, which sounds pretty exciting, and then also on an event for Warner Brothers (something about the Speedracer movie??). But, it's really great experience, he's trying not to grumble about it too much. The best part about it is that outside of getting paid, part of his compensation is that he gets a rental car for the length of the project! The office he works in is about 30 minutes away. SO, basically "Cool stuff over the weekends" is totally back on! Only now we can do things that weren't as accessible with the mileage limitations of Zipcar. This past Saturday, we drove to Sonoma for, what else, wine tasting. Sonoma is further away from Berkeley, and closer to the coast of California than Napa. It took us about 2 hours to get to the first place we wanted to go (I'm still adjusting to the fact that in California, 2 hours of driving barely puts you in another county, much less a different state.) We ended up going to three different wineries that afternoon and actually joined our first wine club. Yes, we have become THOSE people. But honestly, we ended up buying quite a few bottles of wine there, and thought it would just make sense for them to, you know, just send it to us every couple of months instead of us having to trek up there all the friggin time. We're still working through it - joining a wine club has made us feel snooty and old all at the same time. Sunday we didn't really do anything fun except for welcome my staff back and start training! Spring Training is another really busy crazy week for me because not only am I responsible for getting my staff trained in a multitude of areas, and preparing them for the upcoming semester, and making sure that I'm prepared for all the sessions, planning all of spring training for all the staff on campus was my big committee project for the year. Yes indeed, it's a bit of a stressful time. But, all has been going well so far, hopefully it remains that way. So, I'm sure by this weekend, I will be eager to get out and do something exciting and fun. Some possibilities include Santa Cruz, Carmel, Half Moon Bay and Vegas (not really, but I wish!). Any opinions on these? How is everyone doing with those pesky New Years resolutions? I decided to not have resolutions as such, but more long term goals. Resolutions=setting self up to fail. But I would like to remember to take time to exercise, get out and enjoy the Bay Area, and read more. I found online the supposed list of the 100 greatest novels ever written and then with some more looking, I found the list of the 100 greatest fiction works by female authors. Now. Can I just say that I consider myself to be a decently well read person? I thought I would have a fair number of these books knocked off the list and that reading all 100 would feel doable. Yeah, I've read 3. THREE. So, welcome to my long term goal of reading the other 97 books in the next 5 years. (I wasn't kidding around with the concept of long term). But yeah. If you look at the list (and you can here: http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/booklists/feminista.html) and have any recommendations of where to start, let me know! The first one I'm reading is "The Stone Diaries" by Carol Shields because....I already owned it. :) But for real, if you've read any...I'd love to hear about it (LB - ask your mom! I bet shes read basically all of them with her book club).