Unmitigated

Is it Insane to Try to Post in Between Trick-or-Treaters?

There aren't many Halloween-age kids in my neighborhood, BUT...we live in a safe neighborhood that is near to many that aren't so safe. Every year it makes me feel good that we can provide a safe and fun Halloween for 75 -80 kids whose parents don't want to take them to the local crack house.

On the other hand, it means I spent $34 on candy for tonight. Last year, I had just enough for the little ones, and closed up shop once the costumeless teenagers started visiting. I don't object to teenagers, as long as they have gone to the trouble to get dressed up...as something other than a sullen teenager.

What's new? Hmmm. Not too much. I just had the carpet cleaned for the first time in about 4 years, and tooki the opportunity to rearrange the furniture. It looks and feels much more spacious in here...hard to do with a 1,000-square-foot house. 

Last weekend, while the Tigers were stinking it up in the World Series (still love you, boys!), Jim and I went up north with a friend for Potterfest. We arrived Friday at about 3 pm, and left Sunday around 4 pm. In between, we watched ALL EIGHT Harry Potter movies. It was Nerd-vana.Some of them I had only seen once, in the theater, and remembered very little of how they were translated from book to film, so they felt very fresh to me. I ordered a box set of the Bloomsbury UK hardcovers of all seven books from Amazon.co.uk. The Potter-phile and Anglo-phile inside me is just dying to get my hands on the originals, which Jim will wrap and give me for Christmas. Seven hardcover books shipped from London to Metro Detroit for a grand total of about $93. 

I'm not going to say much about the election except...today I got an email from Robert Redford. None of my Republican sisters did, so THERE! One other thing about the election in Michigan...it seems as though every special interest group has decided that their particular ideas should be enshrined in our state constitution. Really? No. Just no. Also, I have to ask...why is it referred to as "inaccuracy" when candidates or parties lie and distort? If you do it on purpose, I think it should be called what it is. Lying. (No, Mittens, Chrysler is NOT moving any Jeep jobs to China.) No more election crap. I will be SO glad when next Tuesday has passed. My son registered to vote just in time to make this his first election...and our ballot this year has several pages!

Mr. and Mrs. Partly Cloudy (daughter and son-in-law) returned recently from their honeymoon. Yes, they got married in November last year, but  Mister PC had just started a new job, and didn't think it prudent to ask for a week off. As a gift, we sent them to Vegas for a week, where they stayed at Mandalay Bay. I understand it's lovely. I have never been, and have no desire to go either. Honolulu, yes. 

As I type this, it is about 7:45, and I haven't had any kids come calling for about 15 minutes. I hope that's not all there are, or I am gone be eating a lot of candy over the next couple of weeks.

 

RTT: An Alternative to Real Work

Surely by now, you all know who Keely is...

I could be putting away all the Christmas decorations. Or, I could write a Random Tuesday post...which one will require several trips up-and-down the basement stairs?

I think you know the answer to that question.

I have been selling books on Half.com which is part of eBay. So far, I have sold $100 worth of old books, a few text books, a few otherwise. The campus bookstore generally gives you $5-10 for a used textbook, then re-sells it for $60-70. I have sold texts fro $20-25 meaning BOTH parties get a great deal.

And I fully intend to use the fundage to supply my Kindle habit.

Yesterday, the other departmental part-timer and I showed up for work, not having been informed that Monday was the official holiday for New Year's Day. We released ourselves on our own recognizance around 10:30, having decided that support staff works better when there is someone to support.

On any given day, I find a reason to be on the borderline of a rant about our education system. God forbid someone should actually ask my opinion on the topic. I might explode.

There is a car "parked" in front of a house around the corner from me. It is a POS, and has been parked in the same spot for nearly two months. I suspect it may be a stolen vehicle, but if I call the cops about it and it turns out it belongs to some neighbor kid, I'll feel like a jerk for reporting it. I don't really want a kid to get a ticket just because he can't afford to repair his car...what do I do? Conversely, what if there's a body in the trunk? All suggestions will be entertained.

Oh my God, I am feeling the urge to dust. Send help.

12 Books, 12 Months: Have and Haven't

These are the books I originally chose for the 12 Books, 12 Months challenge, as originated by Latter Day Bohemian via What if No One's Watching? (That's her fourth book review, because she's not a slacker like me):

1-Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde  Haven't read yet

2-Lincoln's Constitution by Daniel Farber  Have read part, and stopped

3-Henry Ford: The People's Tycoon by Steven Watts  Have read, have reviewed!

4-The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver Haven't read yet

5-The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time by Douglas Adams  Have read

6-The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson  Haven't read yet

7-The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton  Haven't read yet

8-Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken  Have read part, and stopped

9-The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution by A. F. Young  Have read

10-The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862 by Carol Sheriff Have read part, and stopped

11-Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell Not released until March 22nd, 2011

Never picked a book 12, BUT here are the books I have read since September 5th that were not on the original list:

1-River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard  SOmeone I read (help me out here, folks...I can't remember who it was!) read this one and loved it, so I went back to it. I had originally picked it up after having finished Edmund Morris's two volume biography of this fascinating man, and never got to it. Now that I have finished, I heartily recommend it. This wll be one of the books I review for next month, as this post has exceeded the limit I usually set already.

2- The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love,and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean

3-At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

4-Lost Histories: Exploring the World's Most Famous Mysteries byJoel Levy

5-Unsolved Mysteries of American History: An Eye-Opening Journey Throught 500 Years of Discoveries, Disappearances, and Baffling Events by Paul Aron

6-John Adams by David McCullough Actually, I've only just started this one. I'm on page 139 out of 651, so still quite a ways to go with this one.

 

NOW...Back to the original challenge!

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution by A. F. Young

Did you know that Boston Tea Party was NOT referred to as such until nearly sixty years after the event?  It was not the raucous, mob action I've always imagined. I've always pictured something much like the rioting that sometimes happens after major sporting events in the US, with cars being overturned and sofas set on fire as a form of celebration(?).

The Destruction of the Tea, as it was referred to at the time, and for many years afterward, was nearly silent. Masked patriots, a few dressed as natives, climbed aboard the ships in Boston Harbor and proceeded to bash in and dump into the harbor, all the British tea aboard. Nearly the only words spoken were uttered by a ship's captain, asking that the ship itself not be damaged, with which the protestors complied.

Lining the docks, all around the wharf, were also hundreds of nearly silent spectators. This action was viewed as a last resort. The patriots could not allow the tea to be off-loaded, which would happen the following day, or the King and his outrageous tax would have won this battle.

The book is written in two parts; first, as a background story of the Destruction of the Tea, and secondly, as one man's role in the events, which brings to the story, a very human aspect. The latter chapters of the book are an exploration of where history comes from, who writes history, and what things are included, and what are left out. As a history geek, I found this part fascinating, but those of you with real lives may want to open a vein at this part. It got a little dense in theory, even for me.

If you enjoy American history, I think you will very much enjoy this book.

Stealing the BBC Book List

...from LoJo

The BBC apparently believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here (My count is 38, I think):

BOLD THE ONES YOU’VE READ!

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

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 Faulk

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 (Hey BBC, this is one of the Chronicles of Narnia)

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

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 - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

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

My Twelve

I made a quick mention the other day, a tease, really, of 12 Books in 12 Months. Let me give you a little background.

I found the idea on What if No One's Watching, written by the lovely Grace. She found it on the blog of the Latter Day Bohemian, the originator of the idea. It seemed quite smart to me, so I have taken it and bent the rules a wee bit. Here are the rules:

12 Books, 12 Months Challenge

• Pick 12 titles from your To Read Pile.  These should be titles you currently own in whatever format you prefer.
• Acquisition of other formats or translations is permitted.  So, if you have a paperback but want to read on your Kindle, you can get a Kindle copy.  If you have a library copy but want to buy your own, that’s kosher.  Heck, if you own a copy and want to check another out from the library, I’m not gonna stop you.
• Post your list in your public space of choice by September 1, 2010.  If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your list.
• Read all 12 titles between now and September 5, 2011.  Might as well tack on an extra long weekend at the end for cramming.
• When you finish a title on your list, post about it in your public space of choice.  If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your review.
• Once a month, I’ll post a round-up of the reviews posted from that month so that we all know what everyone else has read.

Now, on to my list:

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde - I've had a copy of this for awhile now, but it's a departure from his Thursday Next series, so I've been putting it off. Even though he's one of my favorite writers!

Lincoln's Constitution by Daniel Farber - picked this one up at my favorite used book store. It's a little dense, but it relates to my job, and it's about Lincoln, so I am willing.

Henry Ford: The People's Tycoon by Steven Watts - got a great deal on this for my Kindle. It was recommended to me by the research people at work as a very fair, readable biography of Henry Ford, our founder.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver - My friend, Leslie, has been enjoying this story, and I loved The Poisonwood Bible, so it's on the list. Also a Kindle acquisition.

The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time by Douglas Adams - I got a gift certificate for Kindle books for my birthday from the wonderful people I work with. This is the first book I purchased with it.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson - Just to see if it lives up to the hype. Plus, If I like it, there are several follow-ups already!

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - There is so much classic literature I've never read, even I am astounded. I spent my college years reading young adult fiction for the classroom. Candy for the brain.

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken - Buddy has this, and laughed out loud while he read. This will be my version of a beach book, just in case I start to slow down on the project.

The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution by A. F. Young - I love history from the perspective of an ordinary person, which also explains why I am adding this next one...

The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862 by Carol Sheriff

I realize that's only ten. I teached math, remember? I am reserving the last two after I have read a couple samples on the Kindle. For now, I'll stop. If you'd like to participate, and who wouldn't, visit the Latter Day Bohemian and leave a comment!