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times are changing…

i know - 2 posts in 2 days. wow, i’m setting myself up, huh?

I won’t even talk about how much i enjoyed Bill and Hillary’s speeches.  Wow - did you see him?  Seriously, 3 minutes of applause.

but for those of you bored with politics, we’ll move on to something else.

From etc.: This is a list of the top 106 books most often marked “unread” by LibraryThing users. The rules: bold the ones you’ve read, underline (or italicize) the ones you read for school, cross out the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Anna Karenina

Crime and Punishment

Catch-22

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wuthering Heights

The Silmarillion

Life of Pi : a novel

The Name of the Rose

Don Quixote

Moby Dick

Ulysses

Madame Bovary

The Odyssey

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Eyre

The Tale of Two Cities

The Brothers Karamazov

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies

War and Peace

Vanity Fair

The Time Traveler’s Wife

The Iliad

Emma

The Blind Assassin

The Kite Runner

Mrs. Dalloway

Great Expectations

American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged

Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books

Memoirs of a Geisha

Middlesex

Quicksilver

Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West

The Canterbury Tales

The Historian : a novel

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Love in the Time of Cholera

Brave New World

The Fountainhead

Foucault’s Pendulum

Middlemarch

Frankenstein

The Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

A Clockwork Orange

Anansi Boys

The Once and Future King

The Grapes of Wrath

The Poisonwood Bible : a novel

1984

Angels & Demons

The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)

The Satanic Verses

Sense and Sensibility

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mansfield Park

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

To the Lighthouse

Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Oliver Twist

Gulliver’s Travels

Les Misérables

The Corrections

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dune

The Prince

The Sound and the Fury

Angela’s Ashes : a memoir

The God of Small Things

A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present

Cryptonomicon

Neverwhere

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Beloved

Slaughterhouse-five

The Scarlet Letter

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Mists of Avalon

Oryx and Crake : a novel

Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

Cloud Atlas

The Confusion

Lolita

Persuasion

Northanger Abbey

The Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

The Aeneid

Watership Down

Gravity’s Rainbow

The Hobbit

In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences

White Teeth

Treasure Island

David Copperfield

The Three Musketeers

Really, i never realized how many of these books I started but never finished.

i think i should read more…

2008 08 27 meanderings
real life Comments (1) Permalink

with our hopes not our fears

Curled up on the couch last night, I listened.

As many of you may know, I voted for the oposition originally and given the chance I would do it again. Emotionally, I’m still saddened by her loss. Strategically, I think either candidate was a good choice. Over the past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about him and I’ve grown to respect him and his vision - but I wasn’t that excited by him.

When it came time for the speech; it felt late and I debated not even watching.

I was underwhelmed for the first few minutes. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the story about her family and understood why they chose to include it. But, dang it, I’ll be truthful - I wanted a speech that was worthy of an Emmy; something that would make me want to stand up on my chair and cheer. Something that would make me want to talk about it with everyone. And it just wasn’t there.

He talked about “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be.” And he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and we settle for the world as it is - even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we also know what our world should look like. He said we know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves - to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be.

And there it was. So perfect that my breath caught.

I’ve dedicated my adult life to this - fighting for the world that I believe should be and not the world that is. I fight to change a world that allows children in developing countries to die because they lack clean water and sanitation. I fight for a world that helps children live to their full potential. I fight to change people’s views of themselves and what they can accomplish. I fight against the thought that people can make it on their own and their success is related to the individual and not to the world around them.

The world and our country is destined to be so much more than it is.

My fear is that we will have another 4 years of …  war to resolve issues that were personal, “big man boasting,” destroying natural treasures so we can have more for our cars, politics over humans, and irresponsible spending, shafting those people who are just trying to get by while the rich reap the benefits.

And one day, they - and your sons and daughters - will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them how this time, we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears. How this time, how this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming.

Yes.

2008 08 26 meanderings
my favorite things Comments (0) Permalink

not much to say

But lots of pictures were taken … so without further ado, my weekend in pictures…

c\'s birthday weekend

The big news - in case you couldn’t see - is that L caught her first fish. I’ve been dying to get her and S to the park to go fishing. She’s quite the fisher - this impatient child can actually concentrate on fishing longer than I can! For the past few months, all I’ve heard is “I just want to catch something.” I figured that if she was ever going to catch anything, S. could help her. We had originally planned on going the next day, but S unfortunately had to work, so we went after C’s party since L was going to spend the night anyway. That hubby of mine is a fishing genius - he picked the perfect spot for her; as soon as we put her line in the water, she started to get nibbles. and then her bobber went down - and it was on! We managed to keep the (baby) fish on the line and reel it in - no small feat. It’s a smidge bit complicated to pull up while reeling, but she did it. She couldn’t stop yelling - “I caught something, I caught something!” Luckily the fisherman around us, just laughed. Several came over to congratulate her. That was the only fish for the night, but she did also manage to snag a turtle - which I didn’t get a picture of. I think the turtle-catching was actually a bigger deal than the fish was.

So, now, we have a new word - turtle-ishing (fishing for turtles!)

In other news, I sewed this weekend - I know, gasp! I wanted to make a tote bag for C to go with the “Creative Family” book I got her. Mom loaned me an old machine - that I love precisely because it’s so old. I figure that I can’t mess it up too much - it’s obviously lived a lot! Anyway, a huge thanks to my Mom, who rescued the day by showing up early Sunday morning to help me figure out the whole threading thing. It turned out great - I even lined it, which really for me, is a huge step. It turned out really nice. S. even said that he thought his daughter would be “all over it” and I should make her one for her birthday. HUGE compliment, I tell ya. Normally, he just puts up with my crafting, but this one … well, it was really cool.

Working on

Then to top it off - I made another bag on Sunday - this time for me. It’s beautiful. Heck, I’m loving it so much that I may make everyone bags.

Nothing else too interesting going on - a birthday party for L on Thursday and then her birthday with her friends and a wedding to go to on Saturday. Thank goodness for Sundays!

Before I leave - here’s 2 of my favorite pictures from the weekend, ’cause who can resist these 2?

although she doesn’t look it, she was actually quite happy - i didn’t even have to bribe her to take her picture (really). love, love, love this face

how’s this for some cuteness? why is it that i only get this smile when he’s beating on me? LOL

2008 07 09 crafts
fun
my favorite things Comments (1) Permalink

last weekend

Wow, this summer’s gearing to be a busy one - 2 weddings, 7 birthdays, 1 reunion … whew, i’m already tired. Last weekend was a whirlwind, hubby’s son got married (to a someone we absolutely love) - so we had the rehearsal dinner followed by the wedding (obviously, huh?) on Saturday. Sunday was a quick trip over to my sister’s house for my nephew’s 2d birthday - in case you can’t tell from the pictures - lots of chocolate cake and the little bike was the hit of the night!

62208 weekend

2008 07 05 Uncategorized
fun
meanderings
my favorite things Comments (0) Permalink

Pieces of me

meme pictures

1. 1137 Laurel, 2. Pomme de Granada, 3. Watering the Wall of Indifference, 4. Green and Yellow, 5. Mooouakkkk, 6. New Nikons, we approve, 7. The colors of Morocco, 8. apple crisp, 9. A Kiss For Teacher, 10. Prenent un Bany. Taking a Bath., 11. yodell ♫ lay-od-lay-od-lay-he-hoo, ♫ lay-od-lay-od-low yodellay, ♫ yodallay, yodal-low… ♫ and they fly low supreme! ♫ little egrets from bali- egretta garzetta ♫, 12. rabbit suit, hanging down…

here’s a fun little blog game:

  • Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
  • Using only the first page, pick an image.
  • Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into mosaic maker.

The questions:

1. What is your first name? Laurel
2. What is your favorite food? anything with lentils
3. What high school did you go to? Blue Springs
4. What is your favorite color? Yellow Green
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Kevin Bacon
6. Favorite drink? Coffee
7. Dream vacation? Morocco (again)
8. Favorite dessert? Apple dumpling
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Teacher
10. What do you love most in life? Home
11. One Word to describe you. Questioning
12. Your flickr name. Laurel (I know - not original!)

So, much fun - try it out and post a comment, so I can see what you came up with!

2008 07 05 fun
meanderings Comments (0) Permalink

reminder

sometimes you just have to remind yourself to stop thinking so much. today’s one of those days.

stop

2008 05 25 getting through the day
meanderings Comments (0) Permalink