I apologize for not being around much lately, but I've been busy with various things.  However, I was feeling a little guilty about neglecting my LJ, so I've decided to put up a quick post to catch you all up.  :)

-Unfortunately, I haven't completed ANY sewing.  I did purchase the all of the fabric and notions for my can-can petticoat and outer skirt, and have ordered the sgiah dubh and the kilt socks.  I also located my fishnet stockings, my pin, my sash (which I may not use), my blue velvet sleeveless top, and my shoes, so once I start sewing, this costume should come together fairly quickly.  I also located a pattern for the jacket, and might have some good fabric in my stores I can use.  As for Luna, well, it's taking a LOT longer to start that one.  I have a pattern for the skirt and the top part of her coat, but that's it.  I did have a good idea for how to construct the Spectrespecs, but of course I am having trouble locating the parts I need.  *sigh*  At least some stuff has sold on ebay, so I now have a little money for supplies.  I am putting more stuff up on craigslist this weekend, including a few swords.

-The kittens have been ornery, but they are settling down and Pandora is getting used to them. 

-I finished reading the Beka Cooper books last week.  The second one had come out a couple of months ago, and I needed to re-read the first one before starting the sequel.  I also just finished the third part of a Warriors manga trilogy, and the latest Warriors reference book, Code of the Clans.  I had a gift certificate for Amazon to use up, so I purchased the Half-Blood Prince computer game, and two more HP reference books.  I am currently reading one of those, called The Deathly Hallows Lcectures, by John Granger.  His previous book, Unlocking Harry Potter, really opened my eyes to the genuis of JKR, and to literary alchemy in general.  This book focuses on the use of literary alchemy, narrative misdirection, symbolism, and other facets used in the books.

-I slipped off the eating healthier wagon recently.  I've been in a funk lately, and when I get that way, I turn to unhealthy foods.  I don't overeat, in fact, I often probably under-eat, but I've been eating way too many milkshakes, ice cream cones, and popsicles.  I've been wanting to go walking, but I don't feel comfortable walking by myself, and Mom is always too tired to do anything.  I can't wait until I move so I am close to friends, gyms, and public parks!

-I've already started planning a mega Harry Potter marathon for the weekend before the release of DH, part II in July 2011.  What can I say, I like planning events!

-I had my mid-year review at work - went smoothly and was very positive.

-Road trip posts WILL be completed (only 2 /2 days to do!) but it has been taking forever to upload the last Gettysburg pictures via dial-up.

-Made Toll House chocolate chip cookies on Sunday - nothing beats a warm c. chip cookie with a cold glass of milk.

-Rediscovered my love of malted milkshakes - hooray for blenders!

-Thought there was a bat fluttering around in my room, but just turned out to be a moth trapped behind a poster hanging on the wall.

-Finished the Inkheart trilogy and a few manga last month, and just started the third book in the Horsemistress Saga by Toby Bishop.

-Enjoying the cooler temperatures - 90's are just ugh.

-I really need to start working on D-Con costumes, but haven't been super-motivated.  But considering I am quickly running out of time, I better find my sewing mojo very soon.

Being an avid reader, I am often asked for suggestions on what to read.  Therefore, I decided I would share my list with you.  These are books that I enjoy and come back to time and again.  The writing quality may not be classic-worthy on many, but the authors of all of these take me away from this time and place and firmly ensconce me in the world of their creation.  For me, that is one of the most important factors in a good book - the ability to have a completely believable world with memorable characters.

Single Books

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens - Everyone should read this at least once in their lifetime.

Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes - Ditto.

The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley - Anything involving King Arthur/Arthurian legend I tend to be a sucker for, but this novel focuses on the feminine experience.  Amazing characters, nice surprises, and a very different take on the traditional Arthur story.

( More books )


I'd love to hear your recommendations, too!!

Well, today has been an interesting day.  I've been in Newark, visiting my friends Andy and Kelly, and staying at Andy's house.  It started with me waking up around 10am.  Kim made us breakfast (pancakes and scrambled eggs) and then Andy and I watched some of the anime "Noir" while Kelly was out with her boyfriend.  In the interim, Kim made spaghetti for lunch.  Once Kelly returned, I drove us to Westerville, where we spent over an hour at the Half-Price Books there.  We decided we were meant to go, because Kelly had found three 15% off coupons just laying on the floor at her work.  I found some great deals, and walked out with a stack of books, including one on geisha life, the history and training of the samurai, three Anne McCaffrey novels, the sequel to The Once and Future King (called The Book of Merlyn), a Deep Space Nine novel, and the first two books in a new series by Mercedes Lackey.

After that, we ran to the nearby comic store, where Kelly bought a poster and Andy purchased several items, and then we stopped at Burger King for dinner.  While on the ramp to get on the freeway, I smacked into a pothole.  This angered me so much that I got my swear words mixed up, and shouted out "Fricking shit!"  This caused much hilarity and now has been combined into the single word of "frickinschitt."

We changed clothes and freshened up once we made it back to Newark, and then headed to a local bar called Captain Jack's where a band called Lovesick Radio was playing.  Andy, Kelly and Andy's sister Chrissy knew the members, and I met one of them.  They were very good and fun to watch.  I don't dance, but prefer to listen and observe.  I WANT to go out and dance, but I am also NOT wanting to do so,  if that makes any sense.  It might be because of my weight and my low self-esteem when it comes to my physical appearance.  I can't dance regardless, and I think that seeing an obese woman trying to dance would be a huge turnoff to everybody.  So I stay in the back and try not to be noticed by anyone, while at the same time hoping I will be noticed.  Gah, I am so confusing, even to myself, half of the time.

Anyway, the band ended and it was getting close to 2:30am (closing time in Ohio for bars) and that's when I hit what I call "the wall."  It doesn't happen to me very often, but when it does, it hits hard.  Basically, when I hit the wall, I am very ready to leave the area or situation.  It always happens when I feel I need to get control of things, but others are preventing me from doing so.  In this case, when it hit, I was just wanting everyone to hurry up so we could get going (I was the designated driver, and also had to drop Chrissy and a friend off at their house on the way back to Andy's).  However, they kept wandering off, talking to the band members, or talking to other people they knew.  This made me more and more upset, until I was very perturbed.  I rarely show my emotions, but when the wall shows up, my face doesn't hide anything, and my expression was definitely one of anger, impatience, and annoyance.  They finally started to gather, and Kelly, upon seeing my face, worked really hard to get the stragglers.  I was close to the boiling point (which turns my perturbed state into a very pissed state, which is not pretty in the slightest) and I simply hustled out and across the road to the car.  The wall makes me shut down, and the slightest thing can make me very upset, so it is best to not say anything to me until it passes, which it tends to do pretty quickly (within 15-20 minutes).

Andy and Kelly felt bad about testing my patience, and I tried to convey to them that it wasn't THEM; it's just simply that can hit me when I least expect it.  The last time I hit the wall was the Saturday night/Sunday morning of DragonCon.  Poor Andy really felt horrible, but I assured him I was fine and it technically wasn't anything they did - it's just a quirk of mine.

Anyway, like I said, the band was good.  This was my first time in a bar though, and man, that music was LOUD.  As I am typing this, my head is faintly ringing.  I pray I didn't cause any serious damage to my hearing - of course, that ringing could just be the sound of silence.  LOL

Not sure what is on the plate for tomorrow  I guess it mostly depends on when I get to bed - heehee.  It's 3:30am and I'm not super-tired.  By the time I finish checking LJ and read some in my book, I'll probably make it to bed around 4.

OK, power just got knocked out due to the crazy high winds going through the area.  I can only post this because for the first time in my memory the phone line didn't go out at the same time and my laptop has a full battery.  Time to read a chapter in my current book and go to bed.  I'll let everyone know how the interview goes tomorrow!

By the way, the trilogy I am reading is by an Ohio author (local for me).  It is a cool series - The Warrior Heir, The Wizard Heir (what I am on now) and The Dragon Heir - YA fantasy by Cinda Williams Chima.

-Pandora has become quite the pilferer of pillows.  The last two weeks I keep waking up with her firmly ensconced on MY pillow, and my head at an odd angle on the mattress itself.  I can't even get upset with her, because she is so freaking cute.  *grumble*

-I had an interview today for a regular full-time position at the bank, and it went very well.  Also, another position opens up in the department I currently work in mid-February.  My current manager has said repeatedly that she doesn't want to lose me when my assignment ends, plus she is friends with the manager I interviewed with today.  I feel pretty good that I will have one of the jobs by President's Day, which means benefits, paid time off, a 401k, and a pretty good pay increase.  *keeps fingers crossed*

-I did some more writing today, mostly plot or cultural ideas for my characters.  I finally decided on a naming scheme for my dragons, and started working on a timeline to keep things straight.

-I've been doing some book reading lately, which had been neglected last month while trying to get caught up on my magazines (my subscriptions are People, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Wired, Vanity Fair, and Realms of Fantasy, plus I pick up the British magazine Empire every month and read Mom's Reader's Digest).  I got caught up on several of my fantasy series that had new books released in the past few months, including Book 4 of the Age of Fire series (titled Dragon Strike, by E.E. Knight), Book 3 of the Imaginarium Geographica series (titled The Indigo King, by James Owen), Book 5 of the Powers of Three series (titled Long Shadows, by Erin Hunter), Book 14 of the Tail of the Moon manga, Book 8 of the Trinity Blood manga, and I am two-thirds through the latest Pern book, Dragonheart.  I sure love my books. *grin*

-Finally, here are some more pictures I took on Wednesday.  These are about two hours later, when the snow was coming down much harder and the wind was picking up, causing the snow to drift.  A few hours later, when the snow died down, I ventured outside and made some snow ice cream.


     


   

Yay!  My limited edition copy of Beedle the Bard came in today!  I promised to take pictures, and for those of you who live nearby, I am definitely willing to let you all see it in person (no white gloves or security guard required - lol).

( Pictures of the limited edition . . . )


This is definitely worth every penny, and will become the highlight of my HP collection.  I am also going to buy a regular copy of the book in a week or so.

My limited edition copy of Beedle the Bard shipped from Amazon today!   Wheeeeee!  It should be here Monday or Tuesday.  It's been too long without a new HP-based book, I say.

I finished the latest Warriors book (Long Shadows) by Erin Hunter.  This is one of my favorite series of all time.  This one was really good - can't wait for the final book in this particular sextet to come out.

Now I need to decide what to read next - so many books, so little time.  *sigh*

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

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) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 1984 - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
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 Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (on the bookshelf as well)
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
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
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
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
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
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (does reading it in french count?)
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
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Random things for the day:

1.  I had a great visit with my dad, who I haven't seen since January.  We went shopping, watched some TV, talked, took the dogs for a walk, and just hung out.  It was very nice and relaxing.

2.  I just finished a book series that my friend Kelly lent me.  It's called The Witches of Eileanan, by Kate Forsyth.  It consists of six books, and is REALLY good.  It is about red-headed twin sisters - one a witch, one a warrior - and their struggles to learn about themselves, protect their loved ones, and unite their country.  It incorporates a lot of Scottish and pagan themes, and I recommend them to anyone who likes to read about strong women or simply wants a good fantasy series.  The author has written a trilogy that takes place after the events in the six-book series, which I just picked up on Friday.

3.  My dad and stepmom found a bunch of unused photography equipment, and gave them to me if I could use them.  There were several lenses (including a really nice zoom and a wide-angle lens) which unfortunately - DO NOT FIT!  *cries*  I'm going to hang onto them though, because maybe when I can afford a nicer digital, I can find one that the lenses will fit.  There is also a nice flash attachment, some filters, and a light meter.  Hooray!

4.  I hate this weather.  90+ degrees and extreme humidity are the suck, and can go away now.  *miserable with no a/c*