Just for Fun

I found, while digging through the archives on someone's blog, a list of books. Added here!

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.

The List

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling (Why is this in the Best Books Evar list?)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (I've read more of it than I'd like)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I think someone forgot the word "series")
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this on here twice?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (I think this was overhyped)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
(not sure it should be included) 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Don't think this should be here)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (Oh please remove it from life)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Hate hate hate the writing style of this book)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce,/br> 76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day- Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (I hate this kind of book)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupery (Aussi, Le Petit Prince)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (and how is this different from the complete works of? wtf list writer)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (Not my fave Roald Dahl)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo


The woman I got this list from observed that there is no Twain on this list. Also, where's Poe? There is a lot missing, honestly. Thankfully no Ayn Rand. It pisses me off to no end that the Bible gets included on these lists but not any other religious texts. Also, what is up with the duplication? I don't get that. I think there are also a great many equally important books that are not acknowledged here, and I think that even attempting to MAKE a top 100 list is folly. But fun!

Huh...

So my last name is fairly common. When living in crazy house, my roommate was an alumni of MIT and managed to get me an MIT email address consisting of lastname@mit.edu

Imagine my surprise when I apparently got an invite to join a research community and claim authorship of a biological paper! So I tracked down the person who invited me (because of course you need membership to email them through the research community) and sent an email explaining he found the wrong member of my clan, MIT address notwithstanding.

I think that's the only email I've received for that email address...

Foodie penpal

A quick ipad post to join the others. I have not yet received my package from my foodie penpal. I hope to get my free snacks soon.

Fashion and Happiness

So those of you that know me in real life I'm sure are surprised by the title of this post. I certainly am not a fashion plate. And since moving to Beantown, whenever I'm bumming around, my mom's always like "really? I'd've thought that living in a city you'd be more fashionable!"

Yeah, fashion and I aren't always best buds.

But I've realized a lot of things about myself in the past few years, and quite a few have to do with appearance. For one, I tend towards pack-rat-itis. It's a hereditary disease. K, you are the only one among us who cleans out their closet regularly. For two, I feel AMAZING whenever I do dress up. For three, I always feel like a bum whenever I'm wearing ill-fitting clothes, no matter how nice they may be. For four, heels dress up any outfit and encourage me to stand up straight and walk proudly.

Knowing all of this, I went through several purges of my wardrobe, the most recent being prior to moving. Why move what I'm only going to get rid of? So with that in mind, here are a few of my own fashion rules.

-- Pick a look and maintain it. And then be able to change the look if it winds up not working. For example, my summer uniform was a cute summer dress and strappy sandles. This requires me to have a selection of cute summer dresses to choose from and said sandles which will look good with pretty much anything. I also wore a few pairs of shorts and tees for working at the Farmer's Market and light weight skirts and tops to round out the wardrobe. But it is both hot and humid in my area during the summer (think 90% humidity and 92 degrees. It sucks.), so it requires lots of bare flesh. I chose light summer dresses that, being small chested, I don't need a bra for. I searched for about three summers to have my full wardrobe of summer dresses. I now have about 10. It meant that I was wearing only two items of clothing in the heat -- a dress and undies. It got to the point where Mister was highly jealous of my wardrobe and wanted a male equivalent (but didn't want dresses... :-P).

-- If you don't love it, toss it. I stuck to this pretty strictly. Anything that I did not LOVE the way I look and feel while wearing it, I got rid of. Cute skirt that needs that tiny bit of alteration that I haven't gotten around to for three years? Gone. Cute summer dress that really needs that little bit of work that I absolutely love? Well, lets do the work NOW and see if that makes a difference. (Answer: it did.) This made the most recent purge the time that I finally got rid of most of my theatre shirts and bumming-around-the-house tee shirts. I have tank tops for that if I really need to bum.

-- Only buy high quality and only keep high quality. I recently removed the majority of the acrylic sweaters from my wardrobe. I think I have one or two that I just love the fit SO MUCH that I'll exempt it. This also meant that I got to be a lot pickier in the thrift stores that I frequent. I didn't even pull off of the rack anything that had ANY acrylic threads in it. Cashmere sweater? C'mere you! Ugly color? Well... maybe. By not actually looking at the sweaters until after looking at their fibers, I didn't allow myself to fall in love with a shitty but beautiful sweater that ultimately would not keep me warm and just take up closet space.

-- Know how to layer properly. It's cold in the north east, and my campus is RIGHT ON THE OCEAN. It gets really windy and cold. And I swear to the gods they don't actually heat those classrooms. So! I wear high boots (leather of course), knitted tights, leg warmers, slips, wool skirts, tank tops, underarmor, blouses and sweaters with a cardigan. I layer like it's my job. But, I also try to make sure it never LOOKS like I'm a bundle of clothing. The trick is again, high quality items. The thickest acrylic sweater will not keep you half as warm as a cashmere sweater with or without an extra cardigan. (Yes, I am sadly aware of the thinness of most cashmere sweaters.) Wear an extra thick sweater with your coat that STAYS with your coat (I did this one winter to get the most mileage out of my leather jacket). Scarves, hats and gloves are your friends. I wear them constantly in the colder months. This also gives me layering options from classroom to classroom as they are often up to 10 degrees different. I also wore thin gloves under my fingerless armwarmers/mitts so that I could wear my armwarmers if needed but still use my hands.

-- Know what tricks keep you happy. For example, these days my nails are always painted and I only wear heels. Why? Bright happy colored nails (often red or gold) make me smile whenever I see them and heels make me feel really sexy and give me confidence. They also help my posture by reminding me that it's a thing. Why yes, I do strut when I walk (not ridiculously) but enough to send the signal that -I- know that I look good and feel good and I don't care who knows. Not everyone feels that way in heels. It just happens to be -my- instant boost. For some women it's lipstick. For some it's a hat or scarf. But once you pay attention to what aspects of your outfit really boost your mood, try to incorporate that daily. How I incorporated nails and heels is simple. I removed all flats from my closet and I keep nail polish by my computer. I go down to the bare nail once a week and start over, and touch up chips while checking emails. And red nails DO require maintenance!

You might notice that I have yet to mention anything about make up and accessories, usually the staples of any fashion post. I wear a bare face daily (if I'm lucky, I remember to wash it) and I never remove my jewelry. Occasionally I'll change up earrings or a necklace, but I pick a pretty solid every day look and leave it. I DO however wear belts. That is pretty much my sole exception for accessorizing. I might also occasionally wear a scarf on my head like a headband (I read lots of vintage blogs this summer). The reason why I don't dwell on accessories is I find that with my now-fabulous wardrobe, it invites me to make each outfit interesting just because I love my clothes that much. Or I'll build an outfit around a certain piece. For example, today I wore new shoes which are a brown tweed heel with a bow on a mary-jane strap. This dictated that I wear browns today. So I pulled out my beige heather cashmere tunic sweater and brown pinstripe light wool dress pants. With the green beads that I wear daily and my bright red nails, it's an outfit.

The other thing that I do not mention is where to shop. Personally, I shop at Goodwill and other thrift stores. Why pay more than $10-20 for a cashmere sweater? But not everyone is as lucky to have awesome thrift stores nearby. Also, not everyone is looking for cashmere sweaters. So I think it's up to each person to find what stores work for them. I personally do not recommend shopping online, as the fit of any article of clothing is too important to me. I also find that a lot of the "cute clothing" shops use really shoddy workmanship and poor materials. But they're great source material and inspiration!

And here lies the majority of my new fashion rules. I now only have cozy sweaters, good-fitting clothing and heels in my wardrobe. And every day I get a boost of confidence from my clothes. Knowing that I look good every day gives me a lot of security. Now I only have to worry about what people think of me by what I actually say and do -- for I know that I look good. And I can b.s. my way through the rest. :-D

Apple Pie Shots

So I learned recently that a friend with whom I've had a falling out has removed me from a shared google doc. That is excessive and takes going out of one's way IMO. All I did was delete her phone number. ... I almost feel like maybe I should one up her... (*mostly joking!)

So, I hacked into Mister's account and took the recipe from the shared google doc. :-P

Apple Pie Shots

In a large pot, combine:
1 gallon apple cider
½ gallon apple juice
10 cinamon sticks
Boil for 15 minutes. Add:
2¾ cups sugar (I use significantly less, ~1½-2 cups last time as I recall )
Mix well and allow to cool completely.
Finally, add:
1 fifth (750ml) of Everclear
Bottle.

Makes about 1½ gallons

Recipe Source: http://www.randommemo.com/2008/08/apple-pie-shots.html

Jumping On the Wagon

So I'm going to try this thing called "Foodie Penpals". You sign up, get given a "penpal", and you send each other a food package, limit $15. Sounds fun, eh? You can sign up here if interested.

Tomatoes!

As I've mentioned quite a few times, I volunteer at the Farmer's Market on Wednesdays. Today, my stand had a sale too good for me to pass up: Roma tomatoes at $1/#, with the option of buying a 20# box. Done!

So I bought 20# of Roma tomatoes and figured I'd start my canning-tomato-life tonight. (I know, I know, I move in 3 days, but I couldn't pass that up!)

Using this as my spring-off point, I canned half of my box tonight. It made 3 quarts and 4 pints. I put them all in the canner together, as I don't see that it will be a problem being as they need the same time anyways.

This'll be my smartest canning set-up in this apartment yet. I used Francesca's advice and heated my jars in the oven to sterilize, I used the magnetic telescoping wand from a screwdriver to fetch out my heated lids, and my canner has a basket that I will use to remove my jars!

They have to be in the waterbath for 85 mins, so we'll see how pretty they are when I'm done!

Update: lookit how pretty they are!

Also, this is all of the potatoes that I dug up from all of the potatoes that I planted:

For reference, the largest is about the size of a half dollar. :-P