The Meme in Which I Prove I am A Big Giant Nerd!

I was tagged for this Meme, which fits my Literature Major self oh so well.
Here's the deal: books in bold type I've read, books in italics I'm planning to read.
And, since commenting / discussing books is my favorite pass time there are many comments. Well, not too many, I self edited.

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 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens –
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott i HATED this book with every fiber of my 11 year old being.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy this one flat out sucked.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – half bolded, I’ve read many, but not all...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier I LOVE this book and the movie.
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 - an all time favorite
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 – this is my husband’s favorite book, so I’ve promised him I’ll read it at some point.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky -
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck –I have a strong dislike for this novel.
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 – my favorite Austin novel.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this on the list separately from #33? Anyway, it’s the only one I read)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini – I’ve heard only good things about this book; it’s on my to read list.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres -
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden – Another favorite
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – Angels and Demons was MUCH better.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - 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 – the overly aggressive marketing campaign bugs me too much to read this.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen – my least favorite of Austin’s works.
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 – I bought and read this in San Francisco Intl Airport, during a marathon flight delay three years ago.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac – seriously anti-climatic
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding – another let down
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 – on my literary to do list.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray – brilliant book, simply brilliant
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker – this book started me off an Alice Walker binge in 1995, where I read everything Walker ever wrote.
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro – stunning book.
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 read this the night before my brother’s wedding. I started it about 10pm and was finished by 4am; be warned it’s a weeper.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad – I was forced to read this for a class in college. I hated it.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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

Let them eat cake....

One year ago tonight, at 9 pm, my new husband and I cut our wedding cake.

It was coconut pound cake filled with chocolate mousse and looked like it came from outer space.

The cake was made to match the Futurama cake topper I had created. The whole shebang was a surprise for my Alpha Buck.

AB was previously quite upset, thinking we'd have a boring cake of ivory butter cream icing with pink hydrangeas between the layers. If I live to be 110 years old, I will never forget the look of joy on his face when he saw his cake.

I have set some goals - long and short term.
I am setting them forth here, to enable me to blog on them, track them and be held accountable for them.

I have 6 weeks before a milestone birthday. I intend to arrive at that birthday in the best shape of my life.

In the short term, I intend to set my nose back to the proverbial grindstone and turn in a weekly report at 100% compliance this week. In short, no cheats, no nibbles, no divergence from plan. This means getting in all the meals, workouts and water. At the present, I'm a bit behind on water and workouts, but I have a plan to pull bang on with the goal.

I originally intended this blog to be a chronicle of my recomp (per my trainer you never say diet) and I have noted it is such a struggle with feelings that I am even unable to blog about such matters. I will endeavor to unburden myself of the self hatred the dwells in my soul and shed this damnable fluff once and for all.

Craving

These days I have been having a fierce craving for quiet and solitude.

I jest not.

Quiet is a rare commodity; come to think of it so is quality sleep. My next door neighbors are back. They who think our 18th century domicile with the paper thin plaster walls is a frat house - where every night is a kegger.

I jest not. I have crossed to the dark side. The side inhabited by (gulp) people who call the cops and landlord to report such crude 2am on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. AB and I both work 6 days a week - we've got regular 9 to 5's (which involve long commutes and early wakeup calls) and we're each hip deep in the launch of respective home businesses. When we stumble home at 6:30pm each night we have calls, chores, business proposals and too little 'quality' time together to chill.

So I ask you, wise and sage internet friends... what's the best way to quiet the perpetual toga party?

I tried to be a mature adult and rang their doorbell at 3:30am last Wednesday night / Thursday morning to ask them to lower the volume a bit. Did they answer the door, NO. Each time I rang the doorbell, the music got louder. I took that for a big EFF YOU and called the cops and the landlord. The cops shut it down - but they ignored the landlord too. This I know because he called to apologize to me and vent his frustration. I can only hope he opts to not renew their lease.

I sleep with earplugs and have a Tylenol PM or two every night - they still are loud enough to wake me. AB can sleep through anything - except me poking him to wake him up. Listen, in our house if I'm awake, everyone is awake - you know what I mean?

So, seriously - any advice? Drop me a line via comments...

Mahalo!

Not fair...

Please be advised what follows maybe considered a vent or a rant.

Have you caught the commercial for the diet pill yet that features the cartoon husband and wife? The wife narrates that her husband was fat and happy and she was fat and unhappy so they went on a diet. At the end of 4 or 6 or 10 weeks, whatever timeframe it was, the husband is a slimmer cartoon and she is the same, with smaller breats. The wife narrates, now we’re both unhappy…. enter the diet pill that helps her lose weight and she is a svelte, curvy figure - and finally, they are both happy.

I have been working out hard and dieting seriously for the past 18 months. No joke. I weigh my foods so the portions are right. I have tormented my dearest girlfriend with lunch at the same boring diner so I can order a garden salad with grilled chicken and oil and vinegar on the side; and then use only the vinegar. To be fair, it’s a great diner, comfy, quick service, free refills on the coffee - and we’re regulars now. But really, we go because I know the salad is there and it’s safe. Sometimes I get vegetable soup or egg white omlettes, but mostly salad with grilled chicken.

I’ve lost 15 pounds.

To be fair to my trainer and the money I cough up in gym fees, I’ve put on a fair bit of muscle and lost some fat - so the 15 pounds is a bit skewed and I’ve been told by reliable sources I look like I’ve lost more. Still and all, though, when I own up to the fact that my weight is 15 pounds less than it was when I began this journey, I get crazy looks and crazier comments. And, it’s daunting and disheartening.

My husband gave up drinking soda for Lent, in solidarity for me and my Lenten sacrifice. It was a kind gesture (and to be fair I give up bread and all forms of yeasty goodness during Passover in solidarity) and so far he has lost about 8 pounds. 8 POUNDS… he stopped drinking soda on February 6th. February 6th was 9 days ago. So let’s recap…my husband stopped drinking soda 9 days ago and lost 8 pounds. He is not working out, though he did inform me he’s out of Pop-Tarts and requested I get him some more because the poor guy’s been eating bagels for breakfast the past 4 days. He also inhaled the batch of brownies I made him over the weekend. So, he stopped drinking soda and he’s out of Pop-Tarts - and he’s lost 8 pounds.

Does this strike anyone else as unfair? Even a little bit unfair?

To be clear, lest I be branded the biggest shrew to post a blog… I know this is neither deliberate or intentional or meant to hurt me. It’s simple biology… boys lose fat more quickly and more easily than girls do. My husband is a boy and is blessed by this bit of biology. He is also blessedly spared the migraines which come with the monthly estrogen drop, the bloat and it costs $4 less for him to dry clean a blue, button down shirt from Banana Republic. I kid you not, we both own blue button downs from Banana - NO we don’t wear them at the same time - but his costs $0.99 to dry clean and mine costs $4.99. (Something about the cut of a woman’s shirt makes is cost $4 more. I asked last Saturday when I picked up the cleaning - but I can’t say I BELIEVE the excuse.)

It just seems monumentally unfair to me that this journey is more difficult for us girls. I’m done venting now; thank you and good night.