Finished Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb.
This is set in 1964, from October up through what is quite possibly the best (read: outrageously funny) school Christmas pageant ever.
Felix Funicello (Annette's distant cousin) is in fifth grade and is trying to deal with scary nun teachers (he's in a Catholic school), two older sisters and the odds that the new girl in school is a Communist spy (she's from Russia).
There are no words for how fantastic this book is. It's very funny and sweet (in a weird way) and all around wonderful.
And how can you not love a book that has this for its first two sentences: "The year I was a fifth-grade student at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School, our teacher, Sister Dymphna, had a nervous breakdown in front of our class. To this day, I can hear Sister's screams and see her flailing attempts to shoo away the circling Prince of Darkness."
(The rest of the book is awesome, too.)
Finished The Dreaded Feast: Writers on Enduring the Holidays, edited by Michelle Clarke & Taylor Plimpton.
This is basically the anti-Christmas book, and if you have a dark sense of humor, odds are you'll love it.
The first essay is by John Waters, and it's my favorite of the bunch. But there are also essays from David Sedaris (but not, sadly, The Santaland Diaries), Augusten Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Dave Barry, Robert Benchley, Mark Twin, Jonathan Ames and Chris Radant (the short story that inspired Home for the Holidays), plus a ton more.
Also, the cover is fantastic.
Long ago, when I lived in Boston, my roommates and I had a problem with mice. Now, we were clean people, so it frustrated us that half a dozen mice had taken up residence in our house.
We set out traps and one morning my roommate Julia and I found a poor little mouse stuck to an icky sticky trap. Neither of us had the stomach to deal with it right after waking up, so we walked to Dunkin Donuts and had breakfast.
While we were gone, Kate and Hillary cleaned up the mouse.
Now, living back in California, I have no roommates. So if I go out for donuts, no one will be around to catch and clean up the mouse that is living somewhere downstairs.
I have GOT to get a roommate.
And I need a donut.
My head is absolutely buzzing with ideas and planning, goals, projects and lists. I should be a professional project creator. I have come to the conclusion that there are simply not enough hours in the day. What should one do? Sleep less? Hardly! But managing my time more effectively would probably go a long way towards helping me accomplish every harebrained scheme I think up.
What a delightful weekend we just spent. Sherlock Holmes was interestingly done and well worth a watch. I remember my mum reading Sherlock Holmes to me and my sisters at bedtime. The story of the speckled band scared the proverbial crap out of me. I remember reading the story to Jesse and Libby when they were still quite young (we were living in Hawaii at the time) and they were completely unruffled by it.
I wanted to go to the zoo today (yes, in December) but the snow was coming down thick and fast.
Todd didn't fancy negociating icy roads all the way to Indianapolis so we stayed close to home.
Ice skating wasn't the same without our English cousins but we're planning to get them stateside next winter.
- More love.
- Less weight.
- More yoga.
- More books.
- More exercise.
- More vacations.
- More fun!
These all seem totally doable.
Bring it, 2010! Bring it!
Finished Knit the Season by Kate Jacobs.
This is the third book in the Friday Night Knitting Club series, and it's as enjoyable as the other two.
Dakota is trying to balance the demands of the shop (Walker & Daughter) with her own dreams of being a pastry chef, as well as feeling like everything's changing. (There's a lot going on in this book, most of which are relative surprises.)
These books are pure comfort food, this one especially. Good book to read at Christmas. :)
The kids aren't allowed to get up before 6:30 on Christmas Day. The boys were standing by our beds watching the clock at 6:27.
Lily is not an early riser and nobody's allowed to wake her up when unnecessary or she's a BEAR! She was up by about 7:30.
Our plans got crimped a little due to a blizzard. My grandma stayed out at my aunt & uncle's and they were stuck at their place out of town. My brother and Amy did brave it and come in the 40 mile drive from the ranch.
We had a superb dinner of beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, corn pie, salad, and double pumpkin cheesecake. Since Amy's a chef, she baked TONS of goodies that we got to munch on all day.
Before opening presents, Lily sang us several Christmas songs.
Grandpa & Grandma got the boys these chairs to coordinate with their new rooms.
I've been eyeing these boots for a few months.
I've wanted a stove-top egg poacher for several years. Poached are my favorite type of eggs and my mom always used to make them. She's been spoiling us with lots of poached eggs at breakfast while we've been living with them but now I'll be able to make my own!
When Ray & I were married, my aunt made us a cookbook composed of recipes that she obtained from everyone who we invited to our wedding. It was a tremendous treasure.
In honor of our 15 year anniversary in 2010, she revised and updated the cookbook for everyone's Christmas gifts. The cover is composed of tons of tiny family pictures from several generations and there are other pictures throughout the cookbook. It truly is a treasure!
I hardly had the chance to take any landscape photos this year so I made calendars from family photos.
The rest of the day was spent doing puzzles and playing cards.
Now, we're packing as we're off on our annual ski trip to Bozeman in the morning. Our good friends from Jamestown will meet us there as well as 2 families from here and my brother and his girlfriend. It should be a blast!
Father Christmas brought everyone what they wanted, but Mother Nature didn't bring us any snow.
Finished The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault.
Billy has just taken his first post-college job, working as a lexicographer for a dictionary company. (Lexicographers are the people who define words.) While looking through some definitions for words (before deciding to include a word in the dictionary, they create folders for it and use instances where the word appears--for example, a few sentences from a book, so that they can see the word and the context), he finds an excerpt from a novel. That excerpt seems to be describing his office.
He and a coworker start to do a little more digging (because, really, who can resist a book that seems to be about their coworkers?) and it turns out that the book doesn't exist. Then they find some more pages from that same author, and a crime may have been committed.
Very fun mystery. And lexicography sounds pretty awesome. :)
